Personal and Impersonal Values: On Alexius Meinong’s General Theory of Values

This paper deals with relative and absolute (or personal and impersonal) values within Meinong’s general value theory. The theory is first contextualized within the Austrian panorama of the time, with specific references to Carl Menger, Franz Brentano, and Christian von Ehrenfels. In the first phase, Meinong considers value as related to the subject, but this does not mean that there are no objective values. Meinong does not maintain a subjectivist point of view because he connects value to an objective element: the subject’s valuation proceeding from true tions. After the elaboration of the object theory, he reworked his positions in value theory in a markedly objectivist way, stating that, besides values relative to a subject, there are also absolute values which are independent of the subject who valuates. Impersonal values can be discovered through a collective investigation, in which ings play an important role as tools of knowledge.