Transactions of the Japan Academy

The Baptistery San Giovanni in Florence, Italy, is built during the second half of the 11th century, and its interior architectural arrangement must be almost settled in the first half of the next century, when the stone lantern edicul is posed on the top of the cupola in 1150. The author proposes that in about this date they started the execution of the first original mosaic decoration of the cupola embracing the antique roman ornament, ambitious thema of the celestial hierarchy, the great Last Judgment with Hell and Paradise, and four series of fifteen small pictures of sacred stories. All the decoration must be realized in the style of 11-12th century romanesque painting, with flesh and flat colours combination without chiaro-scuro.
Then comes, in 1302, the enlargement of the sanctuary to the present Tribuna, and its vault is adorned on a sophiscated schema by a new style of somber tone in chiaro-scuro. Its artist and date are inscribed, the Franciscan Jacobus, 1225. He put the end of the Decoration. The first original mosaics of the cupola much suffered the damages of defections and were obliged to receive many works of reparations in the succesive centuries, which alter much the original aspects of the cupola decoration. But in several parts the mosaics convey the original expression, the Hell and Angels in the Heaven, for example.

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As to value-judgement, Max Weber says that the question accessible to scientific analysis is to ask the appropriateness of the means for achieving the given end. The assumption of“given end”is called by him“Wertfreiheit”. The end or its underlying value-postulate, according to Weber, is“subjective”in origin and it is justified only by those who hold it, so that its justification is undiscussible on scientific point of view. G. Myrdal also, concerning measures of economic policy, takes ends or values as hypothetically given. Karl Popper afterwards refers to Weber's“Wertfreiheit”and rejects the assumption of“given ends”. Although he also admits the subjectivity of values, specially values pluralizing in respect to belief-freedom, he puts emphasis on a clash of interests resulted from the confronting values, such as between the freedom of a piano-player and the freedom of his neighbour's desire to sleep: the clash of interests, which cannot be left undiscussible. Thus the dispute about the word value-freedom shows that it is interpreted in two ways as follows.
(1) to be free from values: (i)“subjective”origin undiscussible, (ii) to reject“objective”pretended to evade from“subjective”.
(2) to believe values freely: (i) confronted effects discussible, (ii) to reject“monistic”pretended to evade from“pluralistic”.
(1) and (2) are complementary concerning (i), and synonymous concerning (ii). To join (1) and (2) together, the word“value-freedom”may be interpreted in a wider sense, including both Weber's subjectivity as well as Popper's pluralism.

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