Professor R. B. Perry on Value

Abstract

ECONOMISTS and philosophers or workers in some branches of each field talk much about value, in theory and application. The important book under review should enable those on either side of the fence to get some idea of what they might learn from those on the other side about a problem that goes by the same name. The author, Professor Ralph Barton Perry (emeritus), of Harvard University, has for a long generation stood out among the very top ranks of philosophical writers on value theory in this country and in the world. He is also noted for devoted work in the interest of many worthy causes, especially order and amity in international relations. As the Preface states, the book is the longawaited sequel to Perry's General Theory of Value, forecast in the concluding paragraph of that work of twenty-eight years earlier. As suggested by the subtitle, it covers a vast field; and while it shows wide reading and deep reflection throughout. it avoids the jargon of the various specialties. Since [we read] the 'realms' of value coincide largely with man's major institutions . . . the present study will traverse the fields commonly assigned to the philosophy of the natural and social sciences, and to aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. Its purpose is to bring unity and order into these fields by adhering constantly to a fundamental definition of value; expounding the definition in the opening chapters, and testing it by application in the chapters that follow (p. vii). The author apologizes for entering