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The extremely abstract nature of “value” and the varied uses and senses of the term “value” make explicating it a particularly tall order. Of the numerous difficult questions and issues orbiting the concept of value, we’ll address just a few—namely, what is value? And what is its nature? The first of these questions is about the definition of the term “value”; the second is about the metaphysics of value. In light of our present purposes, we will try to paint in broad strokes. Moreover, we will try to avoid the related topic of the epistemology of value, which involves questions about the warrant and justification of value judgments, even though there are many matters on which the metaphysics of value and the epistemology of value intersect (see, e.g., Kirchin 2012).

First, what does it mean to say that something has value? A common and apparently sensible starting point is to reply that it either means that some person(s) value it (or could value it) or that it is valuable. Yet what might seem like a straightforward choice between two plausible starting points turns out to be the source of an ancient and intractable problem—“the Euthyphro problem” from Plato’s dialogue of that name. In our terms, the question is whether we value something because it is valuable or whether something is valuable because we value it. The Euthyphro dilemma bears not just upon understanding the concept of value but also upon the sort of thing (in metaphysical terms) we take it to be. Nevertheless, we shall see presently that there is a pragmatic approach to this problem that can help us at least avoid or defer it.

At least one apparently uncontroversial claim is that whatever else value might be, it is goodness or “the good.” This seems to point us in the direction of explaining why we seek value out, why we are motivated to pursue it. And this observation, in turn, underpins several of the better-known accounts of value. According to a simple version of hedonism, goodness is nothing more than pleasure (and badness is nothing more than pain or suffering). Put this way, hedonism will be familiar to many of us from the role it plays in the classical versions of utilitarianism developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, according to which the morally right action is whatever brings about the most good (defined in terms of pleasure).

However, the definitional question is now merely moved back a step, since defenders of hedonism then have to say what pleasure is—a task that is more complicated than it might seem. Mill, for example, acknowledged that there are different kinds of pleasure that plausibly have greater or lesser value, although this is a contentious claim. (Is the pleasure one gets from watching televised soccer the same in kind as the pleasure one gets from watching an experimental film? Are they comparable? We return to this sort of question below.) Hedonism perhaps seems more plausible in its negative formulation that takes badness to be pain and emphasizes its avoidance. However, the positive formulation, especially, has been subjected to much of the sort of criticism one would expect to see leveled at a theory that equates value with pleasure (e.g., it regards as good or valuable the drug addict’s high, the sadist’s torture of his victim, Schadenfreude, a “pleasurable” life plugged into “the Matrix,” and so forth). In the present context, it is worth noting that hedonism is premised upon a kind of psychological individualism. In principle, hedonism allows for the possibility of overall goodness as an aggregate of the pleasures experienced by multiple individuals; but there is, apparently, no possibility of a collective or common good that does not ultimately reduce to individual states of pleasure.

One might raise a similar worry with regard to another of the central accounts of value—namely, desire accounts. Very roughly speaking, desire accounts of value characterize the valued or valuable as that which is desired or desirable. As Thomas Hurka explains, desire accounts are popular in part because “they seem to simplify the metaphysics of value, making it not a mysterious addition to the universe but the product of human desires. They are democratic and make value comparatively easy to identify and measure” (2006, 363). In these regards, desire theories share the same attractive features of hedonism. Moreover, the more sophisticated desire theories at least appear to be able to avoid some of the objections we noted above by invoking the idea of a second-order desire. For example, according to David Lewis (1989), an addict “may hate himself for desiring something he values not at all. It is a desire he wants very much to be rid of…. We conclude that he does not value what he desires, but rather he values what he desires to desire” (1989, 115). Lewis then proposes to explicate the concept of value in terms of the act of valuing as second-order desiring: “Valuing is just desiring to desire. I say that to be valued by us means to be that which we desire to desire. Then to be a value—to be good, near enough—means to be that which we are disposed, under ideal conditions, to desire to desire” (1989, 116). Lewis’s so-called “dispositional theory of value” illustrates just how tight a connection there is between definitions of value and theories of (the nature of) value.

Let us briefly consider some objections to desire-based accounts of value with Lewis’s dispositional theory in mind as an example. One potential problem is that, like hedonism, such accounts seem premised on a sort of egoism—that is, on the idea that value is ultimately reduceable to what is valued at an individual level. But we might question if this is really the case, especially in societies that are not as individualistic as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) ones (Flanagan 2017). We can imagine, for example, a collectively-oriented society in which a single individual’s satisfaction of his desires (first- or second-order or otherwise) does not register as good in any respect if this undermines or detracts from the common good of the community (say, in the form of shame, dishonour, and so forth). Another problem, noted by Gary Watson in response to a similar second-order account of desire advanced by Harry Frankfurt in a different context, is that there is no reason to think one’s second-order desires should be especially privileged. Rather, it would seem that one can also “be a wanton, so to speak, with respect to one’s second order desires and volitions” (Watson 1975, 217). That is, one could desire what one does not value at the second order, as well as the first, and, indeed, the problem is recursive in nature so adding more “levels” will not solve it. Another way of putting this objection is to say that although desire-based theories of value boast the ability to acknowledge the diversity of ways in which people identify, desire, and realize what is good for them, this comes at the cost of not being able to acknowledge the wide variety of ways people can be mistaken or misguided about what is good.

Thus far, we have canvased some prominent analyses of value that seek to explicate the concept in terms of the act of valuing, and we have seen that there are forceful objections to all of them. There are many more accounts of value (perfectionist accounts, fitting-attitude accounts) that we cannot explore here. But one possibility we need to consider is that value (or goodness) simply is not the sort of concept that is amenable to further analysis in terms of other concepts. G.E. Moore, for example, held that “good” is a basic concept that is neither definable nor amenable to reductive analysis (2004 [1903]). That view might seem to be a dead end for understanding what value is, but, on the contrary, there are many concepts that we understand even if we cannot define them. Our understanding of such concepts is evident in the way that we use them in ordinary contexts.

This observation points us toward the pragmatic solution to the Euthyphro problem. Roughly speaking, the question raised by Socrates in this dialogue is whether the gods love an action because it is pious or whether an action is pious because the gods love it. In our terms, recall, the question is whether we value something because it is valuable or whether things are valuable because we value them. Now, what initially motivates Socrates’s question is the desire to know what piousness is, and his question assumes that such knowledge is essentially a matter of being able to define and describe the nature of piousness. So, it may seem we face a similar dilemma in attempting to say what value is. However, one might simply reject the assumption that knowledge of what value is and the ability to describe value necessarily requires one to provide a definition or an account of its nature. This is the point Peter Geach makes in his analysis of Euthyphro, in which he observes, “We know heaps of things without being able to define the terms in which we express our knowledge. Formal definitions are only one way of elucidating terms; a set of examples may in a given case be more useful than a formal definition (1966, 371). The upshot of this argument is that the best way of elucidating a slippery concept like value may simply be to point to and try to describe the way we use the term in language and conceive of the concept of value in our everyday practices.

In fact, this is what many, if not all, of the contributors do tacitly throughout the book. The book’s seven-section structure, too, suggests something about value that may seem obvious, but that is far from trivial: the evidence from our practices suggests that value is plural—that there are distinct domains of value that may not be reducible to a single kind of value (or good). We seek out aesthetic experiences, spiritual experiences, social encounters, interaction with the natural environment, and so forth in ways that indicate those experiences afford a plurality of goods. So, too, we create, seek out, and watch motion pictures that offer those same experiences either directly or imaginatively and, thus, also afford the various sorts of goods outlined by the sections of this book.

It is these sorts of practices, in the domains of the aesthetic, the ethical, the spiritual, the social, the prudential, and so forth, that sustain value, and it is to these practices that we need to look to glean a better understanding of the concept. As philosopher Joseph Raz puts it, “As art forms, social relations and political structures are created by social practices—or, at any rate, as their existence depends on such practices—so must their distinctive virtues and forms of excellence depend on social practices that create and sustain them” (2008, 33). These standards or criteria for excellence are therefore relative to the norms of particular social practices. And, of course, such standards and criteria are fluid for they are also contingent on our social practices, which themselves are fluid.

Nevertheless, it should be noted here that this take on value as essentially socially sustained raises one more difficult question that we should briefly address. As we pointed out in objecting to desire accounts of value, one challenge for explicating value is to accurately account for the fact that, in the sorts of practices described above, we speak and act as if people can be mistaken or misguided about value. In this sense, value is an essentially normative concept. It is worth saying a bit about what this means and does not mean in the present context.

We may not necessarily agree on what an ideal vacation would be, but we have a shared understanding of the criteria for something to count as a vacation as well as the sorts of qualities that make a vacation good (relaxation, fun, a change of scenery, etc.) and those that make a vacation bad (stress, illness, logistical problems, lousy weather). In our social practice of vacationing, value is relativized to the kinds of things vacations are, but is nevertheless objective because the criteria for kind-membership and being good of a kind are intersubjectively shared. It is in this sense that value is an essentially normative concept in virtue of the way it is socially sustained. The example of vacations is our own, but it falls under a broader category of what Raz calls “genre- or of kind-constituting values;” for Raz, “a genre or a kind of value combines two features: it defines which objects belong to it, and in doing so it determines that the value of the object is to be assessed (inter alia) by its relations to the defining standards of the genre” (2008, 39). The defining standards of a genre or kind, while socially dependent and contingent, have an objective existence; they are intersubjectively available to members of a given society, sustained and taught in the relevant social practice.

This sort of argument naturally leads Raz to discuss various art forms and art genres at some length—but it is interesting to note that similar arguments have been run independently by a number of philosophers of art (including by one of the contributors to the present volume, Glenn Parsons; see Parsons and Carlson 2008). For example, Noël Carroll (2001) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (2015) have, respectively, argued for accounts of art as a network of interrelated cultural practices and social practices. Carroll describes a cultural practice as “a complex body of interrelated human activities governed by reasons internal to those forms of activity and to their coordination” (2001, 66). Moreover, and, of signal importance in the present context, he claims, “Practices are aimed at achieving goods that are appropriate to the forms of activity that comprise them, and these reasons and goods, in part, situate the place of the practice in the life of the culture” (2001, 66). Partly in virtue of this fact, “art is a public practice” in the sense that the norms of the practice and its goods are shared by members of the culture in which it is situated (Carroll 2001, 66). Likewise, Wolterstorff emphasizes the public and social nature of our creative and appreciative art practices; a key point for him and for us is that there is a wide variety of different ways of engaging art (2015, 86).¹

The points made by Carroll and Wolterstoff can be put together in a way that bears upon our discussion of the objectivity of value and the plurality of values afforded by social practices. Another way of putting Wolterstorff’s point about the diverse ways of engaging art is to say that art fulfills a variety of functions and offers us a variety of different goods. It is not implausible to think that particular artifact kinds, including art and motion pictures more specifically, might have multiple functions or purposes and afford multiple sorts of value (see, e.g., Stecker 1997). Wolterstorff (2015) persuasively argues that art can have the functions of memorializing, of venerating, of protesting, of pursuing justice. It can also have the purposes of persuading, educating, and strengthening community relationships. The list goes on, and the point applies, mutatis mutandis, to motion pictures.

There is an important connection here between function and value: it is plausible to think of kinds that have primary or “proper” functions as good of their kind insofar as they fulfill that function (see Stecker 1997; Parsons and Carlson 2008). Furthermore, it is also plausible that whether a particular kind has a primary or “proper” function is an objective matter. This is perhaps obviously true of biological kinds—a good liver is one that rids the body of toxins and a bad liver is one that does not fulfill that function—but it is also true of many artifact kinds. Both Raz and Carroll discuss movies at length to make this point. One of Carroll’s examples is slapstick comedy: “given the point or purpose of [slapstick] comedy—its function, if you will—pratfalls contribute to the goodness of a slapstick comedy and the lack of them, all things being equal, would be detrimental” (2009, 164). There is a missing premise here, but it is fairly uncontroversial (and Carroll supplies it later on)—i.e., that the aim or purpose of slapstick comedy is “the provocation of laughter through physical business, often of an apparently accidental sort” (2009, 168). Whether all artifact kinds, let alone art, have such determinate purposes or proper functions is a matter of debate. Yet whether a particular kind has such functions is an objective matter (albeit a socially-established, contingent one), as is whether a candidate kind has the right sorts of features and fulfills the relevant function to be good of its kind. Clearly enough, some genres or kinds of motion pictures do, and this secures the objectivity of their value.

That said, the argument does not establish that something is valuable simpliciter or that a particular kind or genre is itself valuable. Christine Korsgaard raises the possibility of “the bad genre” as an objection to Raz’s argument. According to Korsgaard, “one obvious problem is that there are standards of excellence for very bad things: a good assassin is cool, methodical, careful, and ruthless, but we are not going to say ‘the assassin is good because he is a good assassin’” (2008, 69). Korsgaard is right, of course, that being a good assassin isn’t a good thing and does not make one a good person; but that is not what the argument asserts. And there doesn’t seem to be anything erroneous or counterintuitive about saying that a Nazi propaganda film is good as propaganda (i.e., effective, persuasive, etc.) yet not valuable as a film or in general. In relation to this point, it is worth noting that the sort of value we are discussing here is not intrinsic—either in the sense of having its source solely in the intrinsic properties of a motion picture or other artwork or in the sense of it being good for its own sake or an end in itself; rather, this sort of value is instrumental in a way Paisley Livingston explores in Chapter 1. Following Aristotle, Livingston argues that such instrumental value is only finally valuable if it serves ends that are valuable in their own right. We think this is compatible with the argument sketched above, the force of which is that there is an important sense in which the instrumental value of artifacts is objective despite the fact that the final value of such artifacts depends on the ends served.

What sorts of intrinsic value might secure the final value of such artifacts? The sections of A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value constitute a plausible (if not universally accepted) list. The book is divided into sections that individually focus on values that are plausibly intrinsic (or final) in the sense of being good for their own sake—aesthetic, ethical, spiritual, cognitive, prudential, environmental, and so forth—and that motion pictures can afford. These values are public in a number of senses, including that of being essentially socially embedded in practices that are shared amongst a public.

In conclusion, it is necessary to speak to an important reservation one might have about the view that motion pictures possess (or at least have the potential to possess) a plurality of values. How do we then weigh up these different species of value and aggregate them? If a particular motion picture, say, The Birth of a Nation (1915) possesses substantive artistic value yet abounds in ethical disvalue (not just the absence of value but negative value in the sense of being ethically flawed), how should we aggregate those values and offer an overall evaluation of the film? We suspect that the intractability of the problem of teaching The Birth of a Nation and films like it is that motion pictures can indeed possess a plurality of values that are neither reducible to a single value, nor comparable in a way that would allow us to aggregate them in a way that facilitates an overall evaluation. As Paisley Livingston puts it in Chapter 1, “In many cases, it may be very hard, or even impossible, to find a single overarching value or norm in relation to which a work’s plurality of valences could be compared and summed up” (32-33). Indeed, as Richard Allen’s discussion in Chapter 12 suggests, it may be central to a film’s aims or purposes to hold two competing values (e.g. religious value and entertainment value) in tension, and it is even plausible that the aesthetic value that inheres in some motion pictures derives from this sort of complex interaction of irreducible values.

Where does that leave us and our prospects for thinking about value in an overarching or global sense? In practical terms, one promising idea is to simply restrict the scope of our judgments or evaluations. Instead of global judgments, we might make do with pro tanto judgments—as Mette Hjort does (following Gaut 2007) in Chapter 7. On this view, a motion picture’s innovative use of editing might yield a pro tanto artistic merit—a merit insofar as it contributes to its art-historical value; yet the same bit of editing might yield a pro tanto ethical flaw—a flaw insofar as it, say, aligns viewers with the Ku Klux Klan, encouraging us to root for them. It might seem unsatisfactory to leave things at that, resisting the urge to say something more definitive about the film’s overall value. But we should take comfort in the fact that a number of philosophers have advanced compelling accounts of why we should not expect such neatness when it comes to our general norms and values (e.g., Nagel 1979; Stocker 1990). This idea might raise the specter of ethical or value relativism, but since we cannot address that question here, we will simply conclude by noting that the very idea of a common good—roughly what we today refer to as a public good—and the empirical fact that it is a common pursuit across historical epochs, societies, and cultures give us reason to suspect and hope that people often converge as well as diverge on the norms and values taken to be central to the good life.²