. In my paper, I point out that one of the basic questions in the thinking of Martin Heidegger, starting from his very first public lectures as well as printed works, was the question of the essence of philosophy and its difference from other types of scientific research. In the search of an answer of this question, he, also already in his early lecture courses, analyzes and criticizes the concept of value. This is due to the fact that at that time the object and methodological feature of philosophical research, according to some influential thinkers, was that philosophy is the science of values. According to Heidegger, since the ontological status of value itself is indefinite, such a definition of it is inadequate. The reduction of philosophy to the thinking in values is, he believes, an index of the final omission of the question of being.