When looking in society and in the world of sciencescience for sources of basic societal values, three areas or disciplines initially come immediately into consideration: religionreligion or theology, lawlaw and jurisprudence, and philosophy. They all deal centrally with values and indeed all three have made significant contributions to the recognition and enforcement of basic societal values. This chapter presents the importance of these three systems of ideas on values, but also highlights their limitations. Thus, the significance of religions is usually limited to their members, jurisprudence depends on the relationship to basic values that it cannot determine itself, and philosophers often remain attached to the societal context in which they write.