How Can the Field of Value Be Made More Pragmatic?

Abstract

This article is about Nathalie Heinich’s proposals for a sociology of values. It criticises some of them: e.g. her anti-naturalism, her refusal to take religion as a relevant frame for thinking about values, her separation of values and ethics, and her conception of the field of value as including only attachments and evaluative acts and value judgements. It tries to clarify others: e.g. the connection between values and emotions, the nature of values as principles and the characterisation of values as ultimate. The methodological point of view taken up is John Dewey’s ‘adverbialism’, which consists of viewing values as ways of doing and means of conduct. Such a point of view, it is argued, makes it possible to take further Nathalie Heinich’s pragmatic turn, which is mainly inspired by linguistic pragmatics.