Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed.
Reviewer 1: "Intrinsic value is a fundamentally important concept in ethics. The anthology contains a good deal of the best and most influential work on intrinsic value that has been done over the past 40 years. The pieces are sensibly organized, with later articles in a section responding specifically to earlier ones." Reviewer 2: "This collection...offers a nice overview of recent developments in this field. The papers are grouped together in a coherent way. The introduction is extremely well written and gives an excellent summary of the articles included in the anthology and of how they are connected." Reviewer 2: "Everybody who wants to teach on intrinsic value should use this work since it contains many major (recent) publications on the topic and the introduction is very accessible."