Chapter Nine Christian von Ehrenfels

Do we desire something because it has value? Or is the value of a thing a consequence of the fact that it is desired? To adopt the former alternative is to involve oneself in the task of providing a theory of value which would make value a property things have as it were prior to their serving as objects of desire. Theories of this sort have been developed inter alia by Meinong, Nicolai Hartmann and Max Scheler. The latter alternative was formulated by Christian von Ehrenfels in a series of writings on value whose publication followed immediately upon that of his classic paper “Über ‘Gestaltqualitäten’”, and it is this latter alternative which will occupy us here. Ehrenfels’ views are of interest not least because of their relation to the subjectivist approach to economic values initiated by Carl Menger, Ehrenfels‘ teacher, in his Principles of Economics of 1871. Menger founded what has since come to be known as the ‘first’ Austrian school of value theory, the firstgeneration members of which included also Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser, with both of whom Ehrenfels had significant exchanges. Later members of the school included Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig Lachmann, and the school is today represented by, among others, M.