Morals and politics occupy themselves, if not exclusively, then at any rate centrally, with questions of value. Politicians and moralists deplore the alleged decline of values while pressing supposedly new ones upon us. The fiercest sympathies and antipathies, whether between individuals or between societies, are those which stem either from a community or from a divergence of values. ‘So natural to mankind,’ said Mill, ‘is intolerance in whatever they really care about.’

Let us ignore the obvious question, raised in their different ways by both Marxism and sociobiology, as to whether values are ultimately reducible to interests. It might even be a somewhat dull question, since whatever one really cares about must almost by definition constitute an interest. So what, practically speaking, is gained by grounding it in some other kind of interest, when one already has all the information about it one needs? Why should one's caring about a thing require any explanation, so long as it belongs to the class of things commonly recognized, even by Mill, to be worth caring about?

Some more questions: what is it to say that something is valuable, or a value? Is there a difference between a thing's having a value and its being a value? If I say I prefer x to y, I am saying that I set a higher value on x; but is that quite the same as saying that as far as I personally am concerned x constitutes or embodies a value?