Human life is everywhere suffused with values, norms, ideals, rules, principles. They bind us to one another, and to ourselves. All cultures have their own rough sense of what is proper, what is shameful, what is justified, what is taboo, what is beautiful, what is blameworthy, what warrants the highest sacrifice—and a shared sense, shaped by history, of what such concepts mean. We can indeed step back and examine the values that seem to be driving us, now and around here, to see if they are worth endorsing. But this process too is guided by norms. Since the world’s many philosophical traditions articulate those norms, each in their own way, the study of human valuing must not be confined to one tradition.

We should explore the variety and richness of debate, deliberation, conceptual refinement, ethical imagination, and practical reasoning that human societies have created to solve their problems and express their identities. Anglo-European philosophy is merely one local system. The legacies of historical injustice, and the spirit of open inquiry, compel us to break down the barriers that exclude voices and perspectives from African, Indian, East Asian, Islamic, Latin American, and other traditions.

We must create international institutions that promote and enable value inquiry across borders, to draft new maps of normative possibility.  

 The Institute of Global Value Inquiry was created for just this purpose. It promotes comparative, transcultural research into the nature and variety of values and norms. Material and institutional support is specifically directed to scholars pursuing this research in the Global South, under economically disadvantaged conditions. IGVI encourages interdisciplinary perspectives, and aims to build connections between the humanities and the social and natural sciences. Through fellowships, conferences, workshops, and the publication of our new scholarly journal, The Journal of Global Value Inquiry, we hope to expand and enrich our understanding of what ultimately matters to us all.