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We have now completed our short study of certain recent British and continental thinkers who have contributed importantly to the analysis of valuation and values, and who have also sketched an overall map of the value-firmament, of things good or bad in their order of hierarchical precedence or coordination, to the extent that any such order can be established among them. In the course of our study we have seen lively discussions arising in regard to questions upon which, according to certain opinions, only persuasion and not true discussion is possible, and we have also seen theorems winnowing themselves out which should be part of any well-considered treatment of value-issues: such as that there are radically different sorts or senses of value between which quantitative or even ordinal comparison is not readily possible, that there is a deep distinction between values that appear purely personal and those that claim cogency or validity, that values and disvalues have a close and necessary relation to feeling, but that the values which claim validity cannot be exhaustively analysed or even explained in terms of mere feeling, that the main "heads' of impersonal, "valid" valuation, freedom, fairness, happiness, etc.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-00032-6_5

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