Personal Value

Certain things like justice have impersonal value. Other things like your parents carry personal values: they have value <em>for you</em>. 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 Bretano this sort of analysis will come to cover personal values too. In addition Ronnow-Rasmussen makes substantial 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.<br>