The Valor Institute for Studies in Person and Community exists to promote a capacious vision of the human person flourishing in community. Its work is a creative response to the defining crises of our time — spiritual and intellectual pathologies rooted in impoverished and reductive understandings of what it means to be human, of what constitutes authentic community, and of our proper relationship to the created world. The work of the Valor Institute is a concrete manifestation of John Paul II’s affirmation of the “inviolable mystery and dignity of the human person.”
Through academic retreats, symposia, and public lectures, the Valor Institute seeks to deepen understanding of the human person as a unity of body and soul, capable of truth, love, and moral transformation — opposed to ideologies that see human beings as consumers, workers, or biological machines. Further, the Valor Institute endeavors to promote a vision for authentic community rooted in a broad vision of the common good and shared loves — beyond a view of transactional community that exists only to serve individual preference and desire. Finally, the Valor Institute cultivates a metaphysics of gift, which approaches all of creation first with wonder and gratitude — against the technological ontology that sees the material world as something merely to be used. In the words of Eric Voegelin, “Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man’s loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it.”
The Valor Institute has hosted more than 150 academic events for professors, graduate students, undergraduates, professionals, school leaders, and teachers. Past events have focused on Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Wojtyla, Pieper, Giussani, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, O’Connor, Waugh, Faulkner, among many others. Our affiliated professors include Dr. Jonathan Sanford (University of Dallas), Dr. D. C. Schindler (John Paul II Institute), Dr. Wilfred McClay (Hillsdale College), Dr. John Finley (Thomas Aquinas College), Dr. Glenn Arbery (Wyoming Catholic College), Dr. Farrell O’Gorman (Belmont Abbey College), and Dr. Timothy O’Malley (University of Notre Dame). In addition to its academic events, the Valor Institute promotes cultural unity and vision fidelity at Valor’s five classical charter schools that support more than 500 faculty and nearly 5,000 students in Austin and San Antonio.
Partner Features shared with Mars Hill Audio
Turning Petrarchan love poetry on its head
A living tradition
