Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory - Paperbackby Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Author) Charges of abandoned standards issue from government offices; laments for the loss of the best that has been thought and said resound through university corridors. While revisionists are perplexed by questions of value, critical theory haunted by the heresy of relativism remains captive to classical formulas. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's book confronts the conceptual problems and sociopolitical conflicts at the heart