Executive Summary
Purpose and scope. The collection maps the reach of McMurtry’s philosophy across theory and practice. It spans intellectual biography, methodological foundations, and applications in health, education, science governance, and socio-ecological systems.
Conceptual foundations.
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Life-ground of value & LVOA. Noonan’s introduction locates McMurtry’s pivotal move: all value arises from relations between life and life’s requirements, shifting evaluation from ideological labels to whether institutions satisfy universal life needs and enable life capacities.
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Primary Axiom & necessities. McMurtry’s appendix formalizes the criterion: “X is value iff, and to the extent that, it enables a more coherently inclusive range of thought/feeling/action;” disvalue reduces or destroys these ranges. He links the axiom to universal human life necessities and principles of provision, giving contributors a shared test for judgment and design.
Thematic contributions.
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Crisis diagnostics and ethics. Claire Card contrasts the life-ground with the money sequence of value, tracing civil-commons erosion, systemic “carcinogenesis,” and the climate emergency, and asks whether higher education can realign toward life-coherent futures.
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Research horizon. Jeff Noonan proposes a “life-capital synthesis,” including analyses of war, contemporary capitalism’s social-immune dysfunction, and the life-capital substance of the Primary Axiom, sketching a program for future scholarship.
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Health equity. Josie Watson grounds the social determinants of health in life-value criteria and includes an evidence appendix for Canada (2022), connecting policy levers to the life-needs they must reliably enable.
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Virtue theory. Brendan Myers explores a virtues pathway internal to LVOA, suggesting character-ethical integration with life-coherent norms.
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Science and integrity. Nancy Olivieri synthesizes two decades of “system-cooked science,” underscoring institutional incentives that can disable truth-seeking and public health, and the need for civil-commons protections.
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Learning the life-capital solution. Biachra Sahely translates LVOA into practitioner questions and communicative frameworks (including a One Health appendix), focusing on how to move “hands and feet forward.”
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Food systems as civil commons. Jennifer Sumner and Hana Mustapha chart a shift from commodity fetishism to food-as-commons, offering a framework (decarbonization, democratization, reciprocity, decolonization) and concrete exemplars like Beacon Food Forest.
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Personal remembrance. Dustin Barrington’s essay offers a lived window on LVOA’s meaning, closing with McMurtry’s parting exhortation — “Enjoy the mountains!” — and a meditation on life-valuing purpose.
Editorial structure. The book is framed by Noonan’s opening and Baruchello’s integrated overview (life, recognition, civil commons, LVOA), and concludes with contributor biographies, positioning the Festschrift as both scholarly resource and curricular entry point.
Core takeaway. Across domains, the contributors converge on a simple but exacting test: grow what increases inclusive ranges of thought, feeling, and action for people and the biosphere; constrain what narrows them. The volume thus offers a common evaluative language and policy compass — anchored in McMurtry’s Primary Axiom — for diagnosing systemic incoherence and designing life-coherent institutions, from health and education to science and food systems.
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