Persons and Valuable Worlds argues for pluralistic ethics, philosophical anthropology, and epistemology in a cross-cultural context. It provides an account of what it means to be a genuine social and spiritual being-what it means to be a person in the diverse worlds of which we are a part, and to which we contribute in significant ways. It further strives to reintegrate moral and value considerations into philosophy throughout the range of its inquiries.

The work is organized into four parts. Part I deals precisely with personhood and includes areas of inquiry such as the performance of emotions and the nature of the body and of consciousness/mind. The following section focuses on questions of rationality and discusses various forms of rationality and rational practices that integrate value considerations at their core. In Part III, Deutsch analyzes the ontological or metaphysical problems of time and space causality, creativity, and freedom. The final section sets forth the conditions for a creative morality and creative anarchism, concluding with a discussion of human destiny and death.