THE THEORY OF VALUE

Some basic features of the concept of value

Some things we like, or find interesting, or useful; other things we abhor or find distasteful. We judge some objects and activities to be valuable or disvaluable, and sometimes we work hard to appreciate that which we believe to be of value. We compare the value of a multitude of things, activities and states of affairs, and these comparisons are central to our deliberations about what we should do. We pursue what is of value, avoid or attack what is disvaluable; we plan our lives around our most cherished values. And we constantly argue with each other about what really is and is not valuable, yet nothing surprises us less than others valuing that in which we can find little or no value.

These, then, are some of the central characteristics of the practice of valuing. As has been noted by others, compared to issues concerning right action and obligation, recent ethical philosophy has paid scant attention to the problems of valuing. Even utilitarian theory, which would seem inevitably focused on a theory of value, has been largely preoccupied with what Rashdall called the “consequential or teleological criterion” of right action. Indeed, today it is common to understand “utilitarianism” as meaning much the same as “consequentialism”; that is, it has come to be interpreted as a doctrine about rightness with only minimal, or vague, commitments to a theory of value.