The design of thinking in categories of value is a notable milestone in the history of philosophy. The methodological significance of value remains, however, not fully disclosed. One of the topical issues is, in particular, the question of the correlation of value theories and the pluralization of cognition, since the end of the XIX century. To solve it, the proposed work used comparative and hermeneutic methods, as a scientific basis - the works of a number of major modern historians of philosophy (P. P. Gajdenko, Yu. V. Perov and V. Yu. Perov, V. K. Shohin). As a result, the article notes the role played in this process by the teachings that arose in non-classical philosophy: from the aestheticism of S. Kierkegaard to the polyontic ontology of N. Hartmann. Based on the reference to their philosophical works, it is shown that, thanks to the allocation of the principle characteristic of the value picture of the world (all areas of existence are valuable and equally deserve to be an object of knowledge, including in a non-scientific form), by the beginning of the XX century, important prerequisites for expanding the ideas of the “rational” had developed. The development of axiology, thus, not only contributed to the “emancipation” of the humanities, but also pushed the process of “rehabilitation” of extra-scientific forms of cognition, as well as the transition to cognitive and ideological pluralism.
