[4] The second area is the application of such understandings of value to a variety of fields within the social sciences and humanities.
Once there is recognition and understanding of the underlying values hidden within ethical claims, they can be assessed and critiqued.
[3] Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology constitutes an important precursor of axiological ethics.
[9] Max Scheler, one of the main early proponents of axiological ethics, agrees with Brentano that experience is a reliable source for the knowledge of values.
[10][6] Scheler, following the phenomenological method, holds that this knowledge is not just restricted to particular cases but that we can gain insight a priori into the essence of values.
[6] John Niemeyer Findlay, a moral philosophy and metaphysics professor at Yale University, wrote Axiological Ethics in 1970.
[3] Findlay's book is a modern historical account of academic discussion around axiological ethics.
[14][6] Kantian ethics is rejected mainly on grounds of its formalism, which is exemplified e.g. in Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law".
[6] The metaphysical critique of axiological ethics concerns the tendency to reify values and treat them as proper entities of their own.