Publisher's Synopsis
This new study of the general nature of value overcomes the conventional dichotomies of fact and value, metaphysics and axiology, and description and evaluation. It begins with the general notion of value, and gives examples from a range of types of value ? organic, aesthetic, technical, cognitive ? and concludes with a study of specifically moral values. It distinguishes and elaborates three dimensions of value (good, worthless, bad or counter-productive) and four categories of value (instrumental, foundational, ingredience, and performance and performer value). These categories of value are all founded upon the basic category of activity, and likewise types and groups of values arise from specific activities. The activities of living, consciousness and personal beings, and their products, are achievements, realizations of value. To describe them is necessarily to evaluate them. Activities provide the frames of reference whereby objects are evaluated. Human activities are evaluated by reference to the comprehensive activity of being human. And the foundation of moral value is the unique ?value essence? that is each person.
