I. To Value, to Classify

The universe is both valued and classified. Valuation and classification are the two fundamental actions which give order to the universe. By valuing objects and events, one intensifies things with either more or less of the Beautiful, the True, and the Good. By classifying objects and events, one does not consider the intensity of things, but their extension and the way they belong to other objects or events.

An object is never alone in a thing which comprehends it, because only things are alone. An object which is red is never alone in redness. A being which is human is never alone in humanity. Someone who is a believer is never alone in their belief.

The relation between several objects which are together in a thing that comprehends them is no longer a value relation, but a class relation.

To classify objects is to define their way of being in something together.

Every class determines a common membership, an extension to objects or events, whereas a value determines an intensity of these objects or events. The scientific classification of material elements into orders of scale, causal series, or temporal sequences, demonstrates the need to order not values, but common elemental membership. However, the classification of living things and humanity leads to class conflicts. For, if an object is in some class, that is, in some relation with other objects comprehended in the same thing, it can also be in another class, enmeshed in other relations with other objects, since it is also comprehended in another thing. While the classification of non-organic objects essentially depends on common characteristics which are unlikely to conflict, the distinguishing feature of living things and humanity is to produce class memberships which increasingly overlap each other.