Sublime

People are not monads. A real, live human self is always already partial to certain, select others. Morality needs to take this essential fact about human selfhood into account rather than pretend to override it.

“healthy, loving, and supportive families are crucial to nurture compassionate, ethical persons and create sane and just societies.”

Individual rights should not be rolled back but rather made concrete and relational by linking them to obligations towards others.

Prudence is about the careful pursuit of practical wisdom beyond mere opinion and technical knowledge. Justice seeks to bring about a fair ordering of relations within the polity. Temperance calls us to restraint or self-control in an attempt to limit the vices of greed or lust. And courage is the fortitude and ability to confront fear without cowa

Liberty is not freedom from obligations or freedom for selfish interests but a freedom of care for oneself and for others. Individual fulfilment based on personal autonomy has to be balanced with mutual flourishing. Equality is not sameness but a respect for the basic and integral dignity of everyone: their body, mind and soul.

However, the early theorists of social contract were able to take one thing for granted, namely the existence of a shared culture – Christianity – by which people made sense of their moral obligations. The battle in the seventeenth century was merely over which form of Christianity should prevail. Politics might be the arena of self-interest, but i