alues play a central role in our lives. Human needs in life, as opposed to wants, appear to be few: food, water, shelter, and a sense of personal direction or purpose. We really do not need more, at least to start, provided that our sense of direction or purpose is sufficiently strong. In this context, having a sense of direction or purpose means having values.

Because the term values is often used loosely, it may be helpful to define it at the outset. Values refers to objects, states of being, ideas, ways of thinking, or people that we value or do not value and related beliefs, assumptions or attitudes about what is valuable or not valuable. In addition to evaluations and related beliefs, values represent a personal choice that usually leads to one action rather than another.

A study of values is concerned with decisions about right or wrong. In this case, the field may be referred to as ethics or moral philosophy. But decisions about right and wrong constitute only a subset of all the valuations we commonly make. We also decide about what is good, true, just, or beautiful, among many other topics.

During the 19th century, personal values were studied in universities alongside political economy (now referred to separately as politics and economics) and psychology. We forget that all four of these fields are basically about human choice. And, although we still devote much time to the study of political, economic, and psychological choices, we no longer give personal choices, personal values, the same attention. Axios Institute hopes to help redress this situation, to restore the study of values to a central place in our thinking and in our schools.

Toward this end, we currently publish books and will expand the list. We also plan to identify and provide links to other valuable books and web sites, and to collect and publish information about values-related courses in schools, colleges, and universities (including course materials). We have a small grants budget primarily for those who have recently completed a PhD. Applications should be no more than a page and grants rarely exceed $2,000. We would also welcome an opportunity to post comments or shorter work by teachers and others involved in this field. In general, we will try to be of assistance to those interested in or teaching about values.