Timeless Principles for Changing Times
Our Principles
Advancing Human Freedom and Flourishing
At IHS, we believe that the principles of the liberal tradition help individuals and communities thrive. For nearly 65 years, we’ve advanced these principles in pursuit of peace, prosperity, and mutual respect.
The broader liberal tradition has a rich history, drawing from a variety of ancient, medieval, and modern sources. IHS President and CEO Emily Chamlee-Wright often describes the tradition by tracing the “Four Corners” of its concerns:
- Political liberalism: Protects individual rights through institutional rules that constrain government power and treat everyone equally before the law
- Economic liberalism: Generates unprecedented material abundance by allowing people the freedom to innovate and exchange
- Epistemic liberalism: Uses formal rules and informal norms to protect free speech, critical inquiry, and the relentless pursuit of truth
- Cultural liberalism: Based on a recognition of equal human dignity, promotes toleration and pluralism to allow diverse peoples to coexist respectfully
Emily notes the following in her related essay:
- Each of the four corners has a relationship to each of the others. (Hence the double-headed arrows in the figure above.) Cultural liberalism, for example, depends on the freedom of association found within political liberalism. Epistemic and economic liberalism work together to promote innovation and scientific discovery. Liberal cultural norms reduce the costs of enforcing the rules that bring about political and economic coordination, and so on.
- The arrows also signify tensions across the four corners. The dynamism that economic, epistemic, and cultural openness creates, for example, can be socially disruptive. That disruption can make it tempting to use the levers of government control to “restore order,” overriding the civil liberties associated with political liberalism. The intellectual, civic, and political work required to address those tensions is the work we sign up for when we say that we want to be part of advancing the liberal project.
Everything we do at IHS works to develop the ideas that advance freedom and human flourishing across all four corners.
Core Liberal Principles and Ideas
Each of the “Four Corners” contains commitments that are essential for understanding and nourishing the good society. The brief descriptions of these commitments below are intended to serve as a starting point—an invitation to inquiry—that we hope will lead to deeper conversations and new discoveries.
