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Values

Why We Need Them Although They Don’t Exist

  • Book
  • © 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Andreas Urs Sommer

    1. Philosophy, University of Freiburg, Herbolzheim, Germany

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  • Reflects on the question of what it really means when everybody’s appealing to values
  • Suggests that values are just a set of elaborate fictions
  • Comes to the conclusion that maybe those fictions serve some very important purposes

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Existence Is Overrated. What Is a Value?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 1-16

  3. Ever More. Where Do Values Come from? And How Many Are There?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 17-30

  4. Allure of the Temporary. How Is a Value?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 31-49

  5. The Power to Connect, the Power to Relativize. What Do Values Relate To?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 51-63

  6. At Home Nowhere and Everywhere. Where and When Are Values (in Use)?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 65-77

  7. Excursus I: Values and Human Rights

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 79-88

  8. The Unstable Recovery Position. How Is a Value Positioned?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 89-97

  9. Miracles of Motivation and Guarantors of Paralysis. What Do Values Have? What Do They Do?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 99-115

  10. An Unruly Victim Tamed. What Things Are Done to Values?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 117-125

  11. Excursus II: Values in the Political Soap Opera

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 127-136

  12. Against Prescriptions. Why Values?

    • Andreas Urs Sommer
    Pages 137-147

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 149-159
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Keywords

About this book

In his book, Andreas Urs Sommer reflects on the question of what it really means when everybody’s appealing to values, all the time – the question, fundamentally, of what values actually are. Values explores both of these points, arriving at two intriguing suggestions: Maybe what we call values are just a set of elaborate fictions. And maybe those fictions serve some very important purposes.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Philosophy, University of Freiburg, Herbolzheim, Germany

    Andreas Urs Sommer

About the author

Andreas Urs Sommer is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and head of the “Nietzsche Commentary” research centre at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Values

  • Book Subtitle: Why We Need Them Although They Don’t Exist

  • Authors: Andreas Urs Sommer

  • Translated by: Paul Richards

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42159-4

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-42158-7Published: 10 December 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-42159-4Published: 09 December 2023

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 159

  • Topics: Ethics

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