The Practice of Value explores the nature of value and its relation to the social and historical conditions under which human agents live. At the core of the book are the Tanner Lectures delivered at Berkeley in 2001 by Joseph Raz, who has been one of the leading figures in moral and legal philosophy since the 1970's. Raz argues that values depend importantly on social practices, but that we can make sense of this dependence without falling back on cultural relativism. (...) In response, three eminent philosophers, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams, offer their own distinctive reflections on the connections between value and practice. The book begins with an introduction by Jay Wallace, setting the scene for what follows, and ends with a response from Raz to his commentators. The result is a fascinating debate, accessible to readers throughout and beyond philosophy, about the relations between human values and human life. (shrink)

Among the book's arguments: Aesthetic property relativism, as described by Alan Goldman, requires subjects to make judgments based on prima facie preferences for determinable properties (eg being curved, being blue). These judgments are not bona fide because they do not require acquaintance with objects. Value concepts and aesthetic (thick) concepts relate contingently. We can be aesthetic property realists, or quasi-realists, without being aesthetic value realists. Contains epistemological arguments against neuro-aesthetics (Ramachandran), aesthetic sense theory (Hutcheson), physiological theories (Burke), and Hume's realism.