Value theory

Value theory concerns itself with the worth, utility, trading or economic value, moral value (virtue), legal value, quantitative or aesthetic value of people and things - or the combination of all these. Values are implicitly related to a degree of behavioural freedom or autonomy by organisms which goes beyond a conditioned response; values steer or guide the organism, on the basis of internally chosen options. Thus, values imply the (conscious) prioritizing of different behavioural alternatives which are perceived to be possible for the living organism. In sociology, value theory is concerned with personal values which are popularly held by a community, and how those values might change under particular conditions. Major Western theorists include Max Weber, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Jürgen Habermas. Values are at the basis of all moral, political and economic behaviour. Individual values may be contrasted with social values, but individual values may mean nothing, unless they are socially understood, accepted and acknowledged. Value theory refers, psychologically, to the study of the way in which human beings develop, assert and believe in certain values, and act or fail to act on them.