The Quest for Ultimate Value

‘Triveni’ seeks to draw together cultured men and women in all lands and establish a fellowship of the elect. All movements that make for Idealism in India as well as elsewhere, receive particular attention in these columns. We count upon the willing and joyous co-operation of all lovers of the Beautiful and the True.

(Department of Philosophy, Mysore University)

The value of a thing is the importance or significance that anything has for us in terms of human welfare. Human welfare comprises material or economic goods which secure life from torments of hunger and thirst and inclemencies of weather. But man does not think that all is achieved merely by the fact that he has all that he needs that makes him physically happy. It is a tribute to the innate nobility of human nature that all longing and striving for a better state of existence does not end here. The human mind surges with a divine discontent which spurs man to fresh endeavour. Gautama Buddha had everything that one could desire for earthly felicity, but the divine discontent stirred him to his depths. All that ordinarily pass for elements of human happiness could not give him the peace that passeth understanding. Gautama Buddha is typical of the innate dissatisfaction with mere material existence which does not satisfy the human spirit. Sensual satiety is soon reached and leaves man hungering for something which fills the vacuity and the emptiness of the soul. This is how the worst debauchee feels disgusted with himself in the long run. No wonder, newspapers are full of news of those who have all that they desire but yet commit suicide with the scribbled message they leave behind, that they are "tired of life." From this turbulent conflict in the depth of one’s being there emerges the truth that man does not live by bread alone. What does man live for? And what is the sort of life that is really worth living? These will be the questions that demand an urgent answer. Man begins to grope for light, "the light that never was on sea or land." The questionings that formerly looked idle become matters of life and death. Hamlet’s "to be or not to be, that is the question," becomes the dominant note of the human heart. Now begins the quest for ultimate value. Now commences the spiritual adventure on which man embarks. Now is the dawn of the divine in man.

The ultimate values are values than which nothing higher could be conceived by man. They are intrinsic, that is, desired for their own sakes, not as a means to other ends. As Whitehead says, "It is the essence of life that it exists for its own sake as the intrinsic reaping of value." ^l The ultimate values that are recognized as of the utmost significance for human life are the trinity of the true, the good, and the beautiful. It would be wrong to regard these as abstractions or as ideals remote from daily human life, to be eternally sought after but never realisable. They form the very texture of human experience, religious, moral, and aesthetic. Human personality glows with these factors. On the cruder levels these values manifest themselves in cruder forms intermingled with the baser aspects of human nature. It is the pursuit of these values that raises man from the brute level and links him with the Divine. The ultimate values are the eyes through which man peers into the depths of the Divine. The kinship of God and man is the kinship of values. God is the ideal embodiment of these values. Man worships God when he worships these values. There are several channels through which man gets a glimpse of the Divine. He makes several efforts to capture in material forms his glorious vision of ultimate values. The result is Art, Music, Philosophy, Religion and conduct. Art in all forms is man’s effort to concretise his experience of the ultimate value of beauty. Religion is the effort that he makes to mould his conduct in life in accordance with ultimate values. Through science and philosophy he strives to get a glimpse of the ultimate value of truth. Finally a co-ordination of his efforts in different directions will lead to a synoptic vision where the religious, moral and aesthetic values merge into the Unity of the Absolute.

Benedetto Croce conceives spirit as having four moments: the aesthetic, the logical, the practical and the economic. The economic values cannot be regarded as ends in themselves. To take a concrete instance, money cannot be an end in itself. It is there to subserve man’s higher interests. To purchase for one the goods that one desires is the function of money. There can be no dispute about this. This is not to underrate the economic values of life but only to keep them in their proper place. They cannot be ultimate. The ultimate values of life are intrinsic, and the economic are instrumental. Indian philosophers look upon Mukti as the ultimate value, the goal of all human endeavour and to achieve which the whole of nature groans in travail. In the words of Professor M. Hiriyana "the conception of Moksha varies from system to system, but it marks, according to all, the culmination of philosophic culture." ² "The essence of the spirit is liberty," says Hegel. The pursuit of beauty, goodness and truth are stepping stones to the ultimate objective of man, freedom: spiritual freedom, Mukti or Moksha, the fullest scope for the human personality to blossom in all its varied richness. It is for Mukti that man ought to strive. It is the paramapurushartha, the highest purpose of human existence. All the other values derive their worth and significance from this ultimate of all values. Dharma or righteousness, Artha or material prosperity, Kama or the life of desire are subservient to Moksha, provided they are sublimated. Otherwise, they lead to a regression which leads to the deterioration of the human spirit. Of these degenerate men, the Bhagavad-Gita says, "Given over to egoism, power, insolence, lust and wrath, these malicious ones hate Me in the bodies of others and in their own. These haters, evil, pitiless, vilest among men in the world, I ever throw down into demoniacal wombs. Cast into demoniacal wombs, deluded birth after birth, attaining not to Me, O Kaunteya, they sink into the lowest depths. Triple is the gate of this hell, destructive of the self-lust, wrath and greed: therefore, let man renounce these three. A man liberated from these three gates of dartness, O son of Kunti, accomplisheth his own welfare and thus reacheth this highest goal. He who having cast aside the ordinances of the Scriptures, followeth the promptings of desire, attaineth not to perfection, nor happiness, nor the highest goal." (Ch. XVI). Dharma, Artha and Kama, when refined and sublimated, become the steps through which one may ascend to Moksha. If man lingers on the way, or, to use the language of psychology, if there is a fixation of the libido at any of these lower levels, man is lost. These steps need to be transcended. That is what constitutes spiritual endeavour, the onward march to freedom. That is how the life of a householder, as well as the life of an ascetic, becomes the road to Moksha. That is how the pursuit of desire chastened by suffering leads on to the highest desire, the desire for emancipation, rooted in every man. The whole of man’s restlessness is to be accounted for by the insurgent and resurgent desire for freedom. The concept of freedom is vague for him and ordinarily contentless, but the desire is there, the yearning for something he does not himself clearly know until he has achieved it. This is the seed of all progress. This is the ultimate value every man hankers after. Some do it consciously, and some unconsciously. One seeks for it, though deluded, through devious ways of sin. This is the Holy Grail which Galahad was after. This is the eternal quest of man. From this longing and nostalgia emerge the finest creations of the human mind, "the sweetest songs that tell of saddest thought," the architectonic beauty of metaphysical systems, the noblest works of art in marble or on canvas, and the inscrutable passion to lay down one’s life for a worthy cause.

The quest for ultimate value and its comprehension is the incessant task of every philosopher. It gives meaning to the word spirituality which otherwise would be void of all significance. Says an American philosopher: "This disposition of the heart and will, through which a man comes to care for the highest things and to live in gentleness and inward calm above the surface aspects and accidents of life, we call, in its inner nature, spirituality; when it is embodied in outward forms and institutions and spreads among whole communities, we call it religion." ³