Ehrenfels, Maria Christian Julius Leopold Karl, Freiherr von
(1859-1932) As one of the leaders of the “Brentano School”, he affirmed that the fundamental factor in valuation was desire. His principal interest was to trace the way in which desires and motives generate values. He described for the most part the development, the conflict, the hierarchy, and the obsolescence of values. Having a major influence upon the analytic approach to value theory, his outlook was relativistic and evolutionary. Main worksUber Gestaltqualitten (1890), System der Werttheorie (1897); Sexualethik (1907). — H.H.