Values and Imperatives, Alain Locke… An Excerpt
“We must realize more fully that values create imperatives as well as the more formally superior - imposed absolutes, and that norms control our behaviors as well as guide our reasoning. The common man, in both his individual and group behavior, perpetuates the problem in a very practical way. He sets up personal and private group norms as standards and principles, and rightly or wrongly hypostasizes them as universals for all conditions, all times and all men. Whether on the plane of reason or that of action, whether “above the battle” in the conflict of “isms” and the “bloodless” ballet of ideas” or in the battle of partisans with their conflicting and irreconcilable ways of life, the same essential strife goes on in the name of eternal ends and deified ultimates Such the translvaluations of value as from time to time we have, lead neither to a truce of values nor to an effective devaluation; they merely resolve one dilemma and sets up another one. And som the confli...