Eye of Value
Discussion
Daniel Thorson:
"The philosophers Zachary Stein and Marc Gafni have developed this insight further through their framework of CosmoErotic Humanism. They speak of "the eye of value" – a perceptual capacity that allows us to directly apprehend the intrinsic worth of reality.
This eye of value, when open and clarified, enables us to perceive not just that things have value but how value flows and manifests in the living world. It reveals a universe that is not value-neutral but value-saturated, where goodness, truth, and beauty are not subjective projections but real dimensions of existence that call us to right relationship.
Stein and Gafni understand our current meta-crisis – the interconnected ecological, social, and meaning crises we face – as fundamentally a crisis of intimacy and perception. When the eye of value is clouded or closed, we become functionally blind to the intrinsic worth of the natural world, of other beings, and ultimately of ourselves. This blindness doesn't just impoverish our experience; it enables destruction that would be unthinkable if we could directly perceive the value of what we're destroying.
The eye of value isn't just a passive receiver; it's an active capacity that shapes how we exist in the world. When this perceptual organ is functioning well, we naturally align our actions with the flow of value we perceive. We don't need complex ethical calculations to know that clear-cutting an ancient forest is wrong – we can feel the wrongness directly, just as we can sense the dissonance in a jarring chord."