DOI:
The article focuses on the examination of value and value orientations phenomena. We elucidate the genesis of the concept of value and the establishment of axiology as a discipline concerned with values. The positions of such classics of the secular theory of values as G. Rickert, M. Scheler, and N. von Hartmann, as well as representatives of its religious version, presented by N. O. Lossky and D. von Hildebrand, are analyzed. The second part of the article examines some concepts of values of researchers of the last decades of the twentieth century and also pays attention to the phenomenon of value orientations. It is established that only from the positions of the activity approach and the principle of cultural historicism is it possible to adequately reveal the essence of values and value orientations. The article adopts the concept of values, according to which value is a super-useful semantic attitude of a person to reality. The second part of the article analyzes some interpretations of the essence of values of the last decades of the twentieth century. The author shares the concept of values based on the activity approach and the principle of historicism.
Key words: value, utility, axiology, value orientations, axiosphere.