I believe that personal value is extreme important for everyone in our daily life. I agree with Lewis’s argument that about the relationship between personal value and life. As he said, “Personal values matter a great deal. Without them, we cannot live at all, for they are just as essential as air, food and water, and protection from the elements. Without clearly focused values, it is probably impossible to lead a purposeful and satisfying life.” (Lewis, 18) I totally agree that personal value is a kind of essential in our daily life. We cannot live without personal values and we just like other animals if we not have personal values. In addition, everyone is different so the personal values of each person are different. For a wonderful life, everyone have to achieve own personal value. In my case, I believe that getting a high score can achieve my personal value. Because my family will be proud of me if I can have a good grade and my friends will admire me.
I disagree with Lewis’s opinion about if we should have an academic specialty for the values. As he said, “Ideally we should have a new academic specialty, one devoted solely to an overall account of values, but such a specialty does not yet exist” (Lewis, 17). I do not think we need a academic specialty for values because values are different in everyone’s eyes. Everyone’s value is different and the recognition of value is developed gradually by personal experiences or emotions and so on. So I think we do not need some people to study the values and teach it to others. Everyone will have their own recognition of values and it should not be judged to right or wrong. We cannot judge others’ personal values based on our own values.
Mightn’t an academic study of how values are formed and the variations in human cultures help lead to a deeper appreciation and acceptance of the variance in human values? Of course it could lead to an attempt to control and teach only certain values as seems to be your concern. Leads to a bit of a circular argument for or against. I believe that understanding our own values and how they motivate us to make the choices we individually make is of supreme importance to achieving our highest potential in life.
Hi! I just read your response and I strongly agree what you thought that “We cannot live without personal values and we just like other animals if we not have personal values.” Personal values represent person’s own ideology and worldview. Based on what you thought, I think that the personal values are different not only because of the different life experiences, also we are totally different individuals. As Lewis indicates “Make a list of such beliefs and then ask yourself: Why do I believe this? How do I know it? If you reflect carefully, you will see that there are only a very few ways that we “know” anything.” (p.8) I think all these questions are about to expect different answers from different individuals. There is a saying “There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes.” Which also indicates that the values among different people are certainly different.
Nice response anyway. Good job!
Hi, thank you for your comment! You said “personal values are different not only because of the different life experiences, also we are totally different individuals”. In other words, you think the innate factor is an important factor to cause the different personal values. I cannot totally agree with you. I think the reason why we are different individuals is our experiences are different. At least, personal experience is an extreme important factor to form an individual. Everyone is different because of different personal experiences. Newborn just like a white paper, and then the parents, friends, teachers o any others will influence the newborn and finally form him grow up to a person who have independent personality and personal values. So I believe the personal values are different among different people due to the different personal experiences. Anyways, everyone have different opinion to personal values just like we have different points of view to the problem that why personal values are different
Chan Shi,
I believe as well that the majority of our values develop in accordance with the experiences we go through. However, I do believe that that is a small portion of our values system that does grow off of something innate or genetic. Here is an idea: if a set of identical twins grows up together, wear the same clothes, go to the same class with the same teachers and friends, would they develop the exact same values? Or is there a possibility that something innate inside them could cause them to learn different lessons from the same experiences? Some people learn and develop values in a positive way and some in a negative way. I think it’s very possible that people are born with certain personality traits that influence how they perceive experiences and what lesson/values they take away from them.