Sociologies abound in "values and norms". What sociologists and some philosophers mean when they use the word "value" is often not clear. The time in which "philosophies of value" (Wertphilosophien, philosophies des valeurs) tried to answer the question "What is the essence of value?" has passed. The most important philosophers of our epoch seem to dislike that topic and do not use the word "value" very often. It is not a priori certain that "values" are fit to play the role of a central notion within philosophy, but since social scientists and other intellectuals attribute a fundamental function to values, philosophers cannot ignore their presuppositions, theses and questions about values, although philosophy has its own concerns and ways of selection and questioning.
2. Values of and Values for
Certain things, such as money, paintings, symphonies, games, prayers, attitudes "have value" or are "valuable". It would be wrong -or at least very misleading -to call a concrete thing "a value". Values belong to certain things. Are they properties?
Valuable things "have value" if and insofar as they have value for someone. The fact that they are appreciated, at least by some persons, can be expressed by the proposition: "They have value for these persons".
We may perhaps extend the idea of a subject for which values appear and by which they are appreciated, to animals, to plants and even inanimate things (this or that has a certain value for my dog, my garden, my car); but in this article I will limit my reflection to "human values", i.e. values that are or can or could be appreciated by human beings.
The question whether values are properties of things is an ontological one. Values are certainly not restricted to things in a narrow sense of the word "things", because ideals, trends, events, customs, characters, attitudes, properties, etc., can