The philosophy of values (Wertphilosophie), appearing in the context of the neo-Kantian
investigations of the School of Baden in the late 19th Century, is a theoretical approach
focused on the study of the phenomenon called value. The first chapter of this work, with
the methodology of a history of ideas, discusses the formalist ethics of Immanuel Kant, the
origin of the philosophy of values in the theories of Franz Brentano and neo-Kantians
Hermann Lotze, Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask, and the division
of the theory of values into an objectivist strand and a subjectivist one, trying to
demonstrate that the latter has prevailed due to the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's
conceptions of values. The second chapter deals with Max Weber's idea of axiological
neutrality (Wertfreiheit) of the sciences and Hans Kelsen's legal formalism, which is
supported by a subjectivist and skeptical theory of values, both representing the
subjectivist view. It is also presented Carlos Santiago Nino’s argument against the idea,
defended by Kelsen, that only a relativistic conception of values could promote the
democratic ideals of tolerance. The third chapter is dedicated, after a brief comment on
Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, to Max Scheler's arguments against Kantian ethical
formalism to support an objectivist axiology based on the notion that values are material
contents that can be known a priori and are, therefore, capable of substantiating a nonformal
ethic. It is concluded that, though Scheler’s statement of grounds is problematic in
considering the knowledge of values as a function of emotions, not of reason, on the other
hand his formulation of the a priori and of a scope of pure axiology with rules similar to
those of logic facilitate objections to the presuppositions of the subjectivist axiology.
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