We have just seen what, for these theories, the axiological problem consists of: can we find relations between the different values? The problem concerning values is held to lie not in their foundation but in their connection. The foundation of these values is not seen as problematic; these authors never question whether concepts like the beautiful, the true, and the good are indeed values—they simply take this for granted.
Perhaps we may therefore say that the problem of values has been overlooked by these authors, since it lies precisely in the fact that no value can be taken for granted, and that the aim of axiological enquiry is to determine what does and does not have value. These theories do not aim to solve the problem of values: for them, there is no problem at all; in their self-assurance, they have remained deaf to the very difficulty that challenges the researcher's efforts.

These theories are not only flawed because they fail to raise the problem; they also prevent us from posing it, by distorting the concept of value itself and giving rise to the problematic notion of 'values' in the plural. The hypothesis I wish to defend, by contrast, is that the concept of value only makes sense in the singular. To establish this, we must retrace the reasoning that leads these theories to their conclusion.

First, it is correctly observed that many distinct things can have value: a painting, courage, pride, and so on. A surreptitious inference then arises: these things, which possess a value, are themselves treated as values. In other words, what has value becomes a value in itself—a shift from the verb 'to have' to the verb 'to be', with no justification whatsoever. 'X has value' becomes 'X is a value'. Since X can be many things, as we have seen, one deduces that there is a plurality of values: the plurality of objects that have value is wrongly taken to entail a plurality of kinds of value. This deduction is flawed, resting as it does on a curious grammatical confusion between the verbs 'to be' and 'to have': there is, after all, a crucial difference between saying 'a man has a nose' and 'a man is a nose.'

Secondly, since the X in question that we say has—or is—a value is most often a quality (beautiful, just, good), value and quality become conflated; and it is this confusion, the second cause that leads to the positing of value in the plural, that we must now examine.
By quality, we mean a property traditionally considered to have value: beautiful, funny, intelligent, useful, efficient, convenient, and sober are all qualities. The theory we oppose holds that each of these qualities gives rise to a different kind of value; for example, the quality 'beautiful' would be nothing other than aesthetic value, or the quality 'good' would represent moral value.
We must acknowledge the direct consequence that appears to follow from this: the outright disappearance of value. For if this is the case, enquiring into values would merely amount to asking whether something is good, beautiful, or, more generally, whether a given thing possesses a particular quality.

On the contrary, it seems to me that the enquiry into values has an entirely different purpose: its aim is not to determine whether a given act is moral (or has moral value), but to determine whether morality itself has value. Its aim is not to determine whether a given object is beautiful, convenient, or useful, but to determine the value of beauty, convenience, or usefulness, and more broadly of all qualities. This suggests that value is not simply a quality, but rather something that a quality may or may not possess.
Quality thus differs fundamentally from value in that a quality either possesses or lacks value—the possessor is distinct from the possessed. Value now emerges as irreducible to quality, as an autonomous entity that must be thought in its own right: value reappears where it had previously vanished.