Ultimate importance

Intrinsic value is an ethical and philosophic property. It is the ethical philosophic value that an object has "in itself;" "for its own sake", as an intrinsic property. An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end or (in Kantian terminology) end-in-itself.

It is contrasted with instrumental value (or extrinsic value), the value of which depends on how much it generates intrinsic value. For an eudaemonist, happiness (human flourishing) has intrinsic value, while having a family may not have intrinsic value, yet be instrumental, since it generates happiness. Intrinsic value is a term employed in axiology, the study of quality or value.

Other names for intrinsic value are terminal value, essential value, principle value or ultimate importance. See also Robert S. Hartman's use of the term in the article Science of Value.

Intrinsic value is mainly used in ethics, but the concept is also used in philosophy, with terms that essentially may refer to the same concept.

In philosophy and ethics, an end is the ultimate goal in a series of steps. For example, according to Aristotle the end of everything we do is happiness. It is contrasted to a means, which is something that helps you achieve that goal. For example, money or power may be said to be a means to the end of happiness. Nevertheless, some objects may be ends and means at the same time.

End is roughly similar, and often used as a synonym, for the following concepts:

This is a table which attempts to summarize the main intrinsic value of different life stances and other views, although there may be great diversity within them:

There may be zero, one, or several things in the world with intrinsic value.

Among followers of aliquidistic lifestances regarding more than one thing as having intrinsic value, these may be regarded as equally intrinsically valuable or unequally so. However, in practice, they may in any case be unequally valued because of their instrumental values resulting in unequal whole values.

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