who limit themselves to simple matters of fact and who offer them—
the moralists—the gratifying task of master and decision-maker. “Sci-
ence proposes, morality disposes,” they say by common agreement,
patting themselves on the back, scientists and moralists alike, the for-
mer with false modesty and the latter with false pride. But by limiting
themselves to the facts, the scientists keep on their side of the border
the very multiplicity of states of the world that makes it possible to
form an opinion and to make judgments at the same time about neces-
sity and possibility, about what is and what ought to be. What is left to
the moralists? The appeal to universal and general values, the search
for a foundation, ethical principles, the respect for procedures—esti-
mable means, to be sure, but without a direct, detailed grasp of facts,
which remain stubbornly subject to those who speak “only” of facts.^6
The prisoners of the Cave continue to be unable to make decisions,
except on hearsay. By accepting the value-fact distinction, moralists
agree to seek their own legitimacy very far from the scene of the facts,
in another land, that of the universal or formal foundations of ethics.
In so doing, they risk abandoning all “objective morality,” whereas we,
on the contrary, must connect the question of the common world to
the question of the common good. How can we arrange propositions
in order of importance, which is after all the goal of values, if we are
not capable of knowing the intimate habits of all these propositions?
In the set of specifications of the concept that will replace value, let us
not forget to include the function that will allow moralists tocome
closerto matters of concern and their controversies in detail, instead
of distancing themselves to go in search of foundations.
This increased familiarity will be all the more necessary in that un-
der the current regime, once one has defined something as a matter of
fact, the definition of this fact need not be reconsidered; it belongs
once and for all to the realm of reality. There will thus be a strong
temptation to include in the world of facts one of the values that one
hopes to advance. As these little boosts are given one after another, the
reality of whatisgradually comes to include everything that onewould
like to see in existence.The common world and the common good find
themselves surreptitiously confused, even while remaining officially
distinct (yet without benefiting from the common organizations that
we hope to discover). This paradox should no longer astonish us: far
from clarifying the question, the fact-value distinction is going to be-
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