Claim. Actual value emerges from the correlative relationship between subject requisites (desire to seek value, interest, philosophy, taste, worldview) and object requisites (harmony of paired elements centering on purpose of creation), mediated by the subject projecting subjectivity onto the object and receiving it back.
Elaboration. Lee specifies the mechanism by which potential value becomes actual (A. Determination of Value). The object brings its requisite — harmony centering on purpose. The subject brings desire-to-seek-value, interest in the object, plus a constellation of subjective conditions: philosophy, taste, individuality, education, view of life, outlook on history, worldview. When all are present, give-and-take action occurs and value is determined in both quantity (“very beautiful,” “not so beautiful”) and quality (graceful, awesome, solemn, comic).
The mediating mechanism Lee names “subjective action” (B. Subjective Action) — the subject’s subjectivity is projected onto the object and reflected back. The same moon appears sad to a sad person and happy to a happy one. This corresponds to T. Lipps’s aesthetic concept of empathy. Lee then offers three cross-tradition illustrations to show subjective action operating in religious life: Rev. Moon’s teaching that if you know you are a son of God even a shabby hut feels like a palace; Jesus’s saying “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21); and the Buddhist saying “the three realms are only manifestations of the mind.”
This solves a long-standing axiological dilemma. Why do appraisals of value differ so widely? Because subject conditions differ, and subjective action amplifies those differences. But it does not collapse into relativism: the object requisites remain real and constraining. Two subjects may differ on whether a flower is “very beautiful” or “moderately beautiful,” but if the flower actually manifests harmonized purpose, both will register some beauty. Pure relativism would predict appraisals could go in any direction; Lee’s framework predicts a constrained range centered on the object’s real potential value, with quantitative and qualitative variation contributed by subjective action.
This sets up the absolute-vs-relative-standard discussion in the next subsection by showing that subjective variation is real but bounded.
See also. value-defined-by-subject-desire-satisfaction, essence-of-value-purpose-plus-harmony, beauty-determined-by-give-and-take-not-objectively-existent