The Justification of Values with David Sidorsky (1965)

David Sidorsky, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University, speaks about the “difficult issue” of philosophically and logically justifying ethical values. This is the fifth and final lecture in a series exploring the philosophy of values. Revisiting the topics of the four previous lectures in this series, Sidorsky describes examples of historical, religious, aesthetic, and scientific approaches to justifying values and then illustrates how each of those justifications fails logically. He references positivism and existentialism and contends that both perspectives find the justification of values arbitrary or not possible “independent of some other criteria.” Sidorsky concludes, however, that the arbitrariness of values is ultimately “not fatal to ethical living.” The lecture is followed with questions from the audience. Recorded February 3, 1965, at the 92nd Street Y, New York.