Certain things, like justice, have impersonal value. Other things, like your parents, carry personal values: they have value for you. Besides whatever value they have, they are valuable to you. The philosophical literature as well as non-philosophical literature is inundated with suggestions about the kinds of thing that are good for us or, if it is a negative personal value, what is bad for us. This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it necessarily to welfare or well-being. Since these more or less well-grounded pieces of advice are seldom accompanied by an analysis of the notion of 'good-for', there is a need for such an analysis. Ronnow-Rasmussen remedies this need, by offering a novel way of analyzing the notion of personal value. He defends the idea that we have reason to expand our classical value taxonomy with these personal values. By fine-tuning a pattern of value analysis which has roots in the writings of the Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano, this sort of analysis will come to cover personal values, too. In addition Ronnow-Rasmussen makes substatial contributions to a number of issues, including hedonism vs. preferentialism, subjectivism vs. objectivism, value bearer monism vs. value bearer pluralism, and the wrong kind of reason problem -- all of which are much debated among today's value theorists.

About the Author
Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen is a Professor in Practical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Lund University. He has co-edited several philosophy anthologies, and he is the author of Logic, Facts and Representation -- An Examination of R. M. Hare's Moral Philosophy (1993). From 2004 to 2010 he was co-editor of the journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and he is presently Consulting Editor for the International Journal of Wellbeing and a member of the Editorial board for the Journal of Applied Ethics and Philosophy. In recent years he has published articles in value theory and metaethics in different international philosophy journals.

Reviews
The work is so dense with insightful and provocative arguments it is worth a second read, and at least a first to anyone with even a remote interest in value theory. One couldnt do it justice in the space allotted here * Christian Coons, Ethics *
Personal Value should be of immense interest not only to value theorists and moral philosophers, but also to philosophers of mind and metaphysicians * Olivier Massin, Dialectica *
I learned more, about more different things, in reading this book than I have from any comparable work in some time. . . . a provocative and stimulating work. . . . It will not be and Ronnow-Rasmussen does not pretend it will be the last word on personal value. But as a first word it is a firecracker. * Mark LeBar, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
very rich and fascinating exploration of personal value ... [a] pioneering account * Kevin Mulligan, Utilitas *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199603787
Author Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen
Format Hardback
Page Count 204
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 474g
Dimensions(mm) 238mm * 165mm * 18mm