The Lifeworld Policy Institute was founded on July 12th, 2026. LWPI finds its place at the end of the arc of over three hundred years of the historical development of Liberalism as a philosophical force. LWPI examines contemporary issues of public finance, policy and technology through a lens of critical Liberalism. Critical Liberalism is built on the foundations laid by John Locke at the dawn of the enlightenment, traced and developed across time, refined through critique by generations of thinkers, each confronting the challenges of their time. Critical Liberalism recognises the refinement and development of Liberalism during the 20th century. The LWPI is founded on a broad and multi-disciplinary body of work by a spectrum of thinkers across time. The Life-world Policy Institute’s namesake is taken from Phenomenologist Edmund Husserl’s “lebenswelt” The life-world was, for Husserl, the sphere of immediate experience. It is the world as it appears to us in our lived experience. It is made up of (and formed by) culture, relationships, experiences of both objects and subjects. “It is also a historically and culturally shaped world, a world of cumulative traditions and sedimented meaning that we as bodily subjects are anchored and socialised into.” (SEP, Husserl). While Husserl coined the term, Jurgen Habermas’ developments upon the concept of life-world, are central to the institute. Habermas wrote of systems that abstract and rationalise the world, colonising and threatening the life-world. Systems of relevance to the LWPI include financial and communicative systems, though there are many more. Habermas explained that systems abstract and translate the immediate experience of the life-world into idealised models and quantitative representations. The richness of the lifeworld is lost in translation, furthermore, this abstraction is then recast upon the lifeworld, effectively colonising it. He argues the colonisation of the life world by systems reduces the ability to reproduce social relations and leads to social ills including alienation, loss of freedom and anomie, amongst others. The Lifeworld Policy institute was established in the year of his passing to commemorate Habermas and continue the legacy of his work into the 21st century. The central purpose of the LWPI is to identify and examine instances of misalignment between systems and the life-world and to advocate for the realignment of systems to adhere to the primacy of the life-world. In brief, the Life-world Policy Institute’s central purpose is to advocate for systems to serve human interests. To boldly affirm the primacy of the life-world. The 21st century offers a unique opportunity to bring about a richer life-world for more people than ever before, but it also brings new threats to the life-world, threats which are uniquely 21st century, and for which new responses must be formulated. The aim of the Life-World Policy Institute is to participate in the arc of history by address these new threats.
Roux Davies is a Public Finance Accountant working in local government. He is passionate and ambitious in his work, striving to always learn and do more. He feels a genuine appreciation for the opportunity to serve the local community through supporting services and provisions which make up for market failures. He is assured of the value of his work and founded the Life-World Policy Institute out of a desire to achieve more of the same good. He does not have a typical background in Finance or Accountancy. He graduated with first class honours in Philosophy from the University of Southampton and has always been firmly entrenched in the Humanities, holding the role of President of the School of Humanities in his final year. Quantitative, mathematical thinking does not come naturally to him. Instead, his career is the outcome of a synthesis of uniquely 21st century experiences and attitudes. Born in rural North Wales, 2001, Roux’s perspective is steeped in a blend of the universalising metropolitanism and information availability of the internet contrasted against the quiet pastoral landscape decorated by the remains of bronze age settlements and pockmarked by the mines and dilapidated ruins of an industry that dried up and was replaced by nothing at all. Having graduated into the worst job market in a decade, he experienced first hand the struggle young people face as a consequence of a market that has no place for them. This experience was not merely intellectual. It revealed the profound impact economic systems, public policy and market forces can have on the inner life of an individual and the broader fabric that makes up the life-world. The denial of meaningful opportunities to contribute, to participate and to better the world cripples self-image and the social fabric that make up the life-word. It breeds apathy, contempt and hopelessness. For Roux, this illustrated the weight of impact markets and policy can have on the life-world Through reading an extensive body of Philosophy of technology Roux determined that rationalisation of the life-world has created a situation in which the only means of affecting change in support of the life-world is through a cynical engagement with the abstracted systems that have colonised the life-world. Presupposing this to be the case and driven by a conviction to “be not simply good; be good for something” (itself an ironically technological phrase of Thoreau’s) he pushed himself to study finance to grasp a greater understanding of the situation at hand through work and continued study. Consolidating plans he had kept for some time, Roux founded the Life-world Policy institute on July 12th, 2026. The date was chosen to fall on Henry David Thoreau’s 209th birthday. Thoreau has been a hugely important figure for Roux. While many other figures play far greater roles as intellectuals in the arc of thought behind the LWPI, Thoreau is uniquely action oriented and full of life. It was determined LWPI must launch in 2026 both to commemorate the passing of Jurgen Habermas and as a statement of intention to continue and build upon his legacy into the 21st century. Drawing on Roux’s work in public finance, the Life-world Policy Institute is primarily interested in examining public spending and fiscal policy in the United Kingdom. This focus flows from a conviction that finance has broadly colonised public life. If one wishes to bring about change, start with finance and the policies will flow from this.