Value Theory
Value theory is the branch of philosophy that studies values. Lt can be subdivided into ethics, aesthetics ,and social and political philosophy.
In broad terms ethics concerns itself with the question of morality. What is right and what is wrong in human relations within morality and ethics there are three major areas: descriptive ethics, normative ethics, and metaethics. Descriptive ethics seeks to identify moral experience in a descriptive way. We seek to identify, within the range of human conduct, the motives, desires ,and intentions as well as overt acts themselves. We consider the conduct of individuals, or personal morality; the conduct of groups ,or social morality; and the culture patterns of national and racial groups. Descriptive ethics is in part an attempt to distinguish what is from what ought to be.
A second level of inquiry is normative ethics. Here philosophers try to work out acceptable judgments regarding what ought to be in choice and value. We ought to keep our promises and you ought to be honorable are examples of normative judgments-fo the moral ought ,the subject matter of ethics. From the time of the early Greeks , philosophers have formulated principles of explanation to examine why people act the way they do, and what.