Abstract

Rescher has prepared this book for use as a text in upper level courses in value theory, and as supplementary reading in courses in normative ethics, methodology in economic theory, and methodology in the social sciences. Some sections have been published previously. More than half the chapters are new material. Reference tools are provided in 50 pages of bibliography and indexes. The values studied are the ordinary ones of life situations. Rescher takes an essentially objectivist view of values; they are either well- or ill-founded, they are shot through with factual considerations, and they are either right or wrong. After treating the nature and role of values, in the middle third of the book, he deals with problems of axiology; the grounding of a generic conception of Value to provide a unified basis for the wide diversity of contexts in which evaluation takes place, the study of the phenomenon of valuing, and a codification of the rules of valuation. There is some quite technical material, especially the chapter on Evaluation and the Logic of Preference, and the two appendices. Rescher's intent is to bridge the logico-philosophical, and the mathematico-economic traditions. The final third of the book concerns value and social change.--M. B. M.