THE PREMISES BEHIND WAYPOINTS
Education should inspire us to look up—to see what is beautiful and high, and thereby discern a standard by which we can judge what is low and ugly. It should help us distinguish between merely living and living well. Education should remind us that political self-government rests upon the moral virtues required for personal self-government. Above all, education should be ordered toward the relentless pursuit of truth.
— Benjamin Franklin
Thirty Ideas — One Interconnected Intellectual Constellation
Waypoints was designed to help students understand and appreciate the Key Ideas of Liberty. These ideas become clearer when we encounter them through the arguments of thinkers and statesmen who discovered them, articulated them, defended them, refined them, qualified them, or challenged them. Every document in the Waypoints Library was selected because it helps illuminate one or more of these Key Ideas.
Primary sources allow us to examine the same idea from different points of view. John Locke has something to say about property. So do Adam Smith, James Madison, and Karl Marx. They do not understand property in precisely the same way. By reading them alongside one another—seeing where they agree, where they differ, what each brings into focus, and what each leaves open—we gain a deeper and richer understanding of the idea itself.
The Key Ideas help readers see what is at stake in the documents, while the documents help readers understand the Key Ideas more clearly. The larger purpose is both civic and personal: helping citizens understand the principles necessary to preserve a free republic while helping human beings think more seriously about how to live well.
Select a Key Idea and see some of its connections to other ideas. Click on one and watch what happens.
Click any node to explore its connections
PERSONAL AND POLITICAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
The capacity and habit of being personally responsible for one’s own actions while governing one’s own appetites, impulses, and passions with reason. Governing oneself means exercising personal freedom through deliberate, wise choices—informed by courage, justice, and moderation—resulting in genuine self-direction.
Citizens governing themselves through wisely designed institutions and laws that they ultimately authorize, directly or indirectly. Constitutional self-government requires both limits on government power and the virtues required for choosing well.
FROM IDEAS TO DOCUMENTS
Every published document in the Waypoints Library is connected to the Key Ideas it helps illuminate. Follow an idea across authors, centuries, controversies, and historical events.
Go beneath the definitions.
EXPLORE KEY IDEAS FOR YOURSELF
Premises begins with ideas. The Waypoints Library lets you follow those ideas through the primary sources in which they were argued, challenged, refined, and applied.
