Axiological Study: Problem and its Breakthrough

As an universal and important problem concerning contemporary people, the problem of value or outlook of value challenges the philosophy of value in China, highlighting the contradiction in the study of axiology between the instrumental definition of value and the ontological commitment to value. That contradiction is a symptom of the confusion and difficulty in the studying of axiology, which is limited within the epistemological framework, as to explain the value empirically and cognitively and charge the value with the ultimate concern. Therefore in order to make a breakthrough in axiology and to analyze correctly and deeply the confusion of value and meaning in the reality, it is necessary to be ontologically conscious of the problem of value, to re-interpret the practice and to study the value by way of the phenomenology of existence embodied in the concept of praxis. From that viewpoint, value is to be treated as the cultural and living phenomenon that arises from the objective activities by human being, as the human being's self-transcendence process, and as the historical dialectic relation between the actual existence and ideal existence of human being, between the finite individuals and infinite species.