For Commentary
How each value shapes worldview, rhetoric, and political instinct.
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Courage
Classical republican virtue theory (Machiavelli, Arendt)
The republican tradition, particularly in Machiavelli's Discourses and Arendt's writings on political action, holds that courage is the fundamental political virtue because politics requires appearing before others and acting in the public realm where outcomes are unpredictable. Arendt's concept of 'natality,' the capacity to begin something new, is inherently courageous because the new is by definition risky.
Courage
Thoreavian civil disobedience
Thoreau's 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' argues that the individual conscience has not only the right but the obligation to resist unjust law, and that obedience to unjust authority is a greater moral failure than the disruption caused by resistance. This tradition provides the philosophical foundation for political courage understood as the willingness to break rules that violate one's principles.
Growth
Dewey's progressive pragmatism
Dewey argued that democracy is not merely a form of government but a way of life organized around shared inquiry, mutual education, and the experimental resolution of social problems. His vision of politics as collective problem-solving through intelligent experimentation is the most fully developed philosophical expression of Growth as a political value.
Growth
Capabilities approach (Sen, Nussbaum)
Amartya Sen's and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach argues that the purpose of political and economic systems is to expand the range of things people can do and be. This framework shifts the measure of political success from GDP or utility to the actual development of human capacities, making Growth central to the evaluation of political institutions.
Growth
German Idealism and Bildung (Hegel, Humboldt)
The German tradition of Bildung holds that the highest purpose of social institutions is the full development of each individual's capacities. Humboldt's argument that the state's role is to create conditions for self-cultivation, and Hegel's understanding of history as the progressive development of freedom, both express Growth's philosophical ambitions at their most systematic.
Meaning
Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Frankl)
Existential philosophy argues that the question of meaning is the central human question and that no political or economic arrangement can answer it for the individual. Frankl's logotherapy, developed in the death camps, holds that the will to meaning is the primary motivational force in human life and that meaning can be found even in suffering, a claim with profound political implications for how societies handle crisis and loss.
Meaning
Communitarianism (MacIntyre, Taylor, Sandel)
Communitarian philosophy argues that meaningful human life requires embeddedness in particular communities, traditions, and moral frameworks that liberalism's emphasis on individual autonomy tends to erode. MacIntyre's After Virtue argues that modern liberal societies have lost the shared moral vocabulary necessary for meaningful political discourse, producing a politics of mere preference rather than genuine moral reasoning.
Meaning
Political theology (Schmitt, Voegelin, Milbank)
Political theology examines the religious roots of political concepts and the ways in which secular politics retains theological structures. Voegelin's argument that totalitarianism represents the 'immanentization of the eschaton,' the attempt to create meaning through political action that should be sought in transcendence, captures the danger of Meaning when it becomes politically absolutist.
Trust
Social contract theory (Locke, Rousseau, Rawls)
Social contract theory holds that political authority is legitimate only to the extent that it fulfills the terms of an implicit agreement between citizens and the state. Locke's argument that government exists to protect natural rights, and that citizens may withdraw consent when government fails to do so, provides the foundational logic for Trust as a political value.
Trust
Institutional economics (North, Ostrom)
Douglass North's argument that institutions, the formal and informal rules that govern human interaction, are the primary determinant of economic performance, and Elinor Ostrom's research on how communities build and maintain trust-based governance of shared resources, provide the empirical foundation for Trust's political claims.
Trust
Rule of law theory (Dicey, Fuller, Raz)
The rule of law tradition, from Dicey's constitutional principles through Lon Fuller's 'inner morality of law' to Joseph Raz's formal requirements of legality, establishes the conditions under which legal systems generate and maintain trust. Fuller's argument that law must be general, public, prospective, and consistently enforced describes the institutional requirements of political trust.
Identity
Recognition theory (Hegel, Taylor, Honneth)
Hegel's master-slave dialectic established that human self-consciousness depends on recognition by others, and Charles Taylor's 'Politics of Recognition' argued that the demand for recognition is a fundamental political need. Axel Honneth's theory of recognition holds that self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence all depend on social and political acknowledgment of one's identity.
Identity
Existential authenticity (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre)
The existentialist tradition's emphasis on authentic selfhood, the refusal to live according to others' expectations, provides the philosophical foundation for Identity's demand that individuals be free to define themselves. Sartre's insistence that existence precedes essence, that human beings create themselves through choices rather than conforming to a fixed nature, directly supports the politics of self-determination.
Identity
Postcolonial theory (Fanon, Said, Spivak)
Postcolonial theory examines how colonial power structures imposed identities on colonized peoples while suppressing indigenous self-understanding. Fanon's analysis of the psychological damage of colonialism and Said's critique of Orientalism reveal how identity is not merely personal but politically constructed, and how the reclamation of identity is a political act.
Devotion
Ethics of care (Gilligan, Noddings, Held)
Carol Gilligan's research demonstrated that women's moral reasoning often centers on care and responsibility rather than abstract justice, and Nel Noddings and Virginia Held developed this insight into a comprehensive ethical framework. Care ethics argues that the caring relationship, not the autonomous individual, is the basic unit of moral and political life.
Devotion
Catholic social teaching
Catholic social teaching, from Rerum Novarum through contemporary papal encyclicals, holds that political and economic systems must be evaluated by their effects on the most vulnerable members of society. The principle of the 'preferential option for the poor' expresses Devotion's political demand that the vulnerable be placed at the center of policy evaluation.