About Cardus

What is Cardus?

Cardus is a think tank: an ideas lab for social innovation. We build intellectual capacity, social networks and policy alternatives to sustain a wide range of cultural entrepreneurs for the renewal of North American social architecture. Our team members are scattered across Canada and the US. The home base for Cardus is the city of Hamilton.

What does 'Cardus' Mean?

The Cardus was a kind of marketplace or public square that took the form of a public street. It was the north-south road that connected people in Roman cities to their major public spaces. On the Cardus (or Cardo Maximus), government, markets, temples and other social groups met to establish a common life for the good of the city.

What is the Cardus angle?

We face a growing gap. Our institutions and cities are connected by high speed networks that move people, products and information with increasing speed. This acceleration has important cultural implications. Cardus conducts research that explores how these changes will re-define our moral and political horizons. We are working to understand how the institutions of our time can fulfill their responsibilities amid these changes and make strong cultural contributions.

The Cardus angle is macroscopic. We're the liberal arts program of the think tank world: not staffed with experts in minutia, but a hot spot for widely read public intellectuals. We are a hub within which networks of expertise work out ideas for practical application. We connect the "why" to the "how."

What We Believe

We believe in the deep influence of story and in the power of communal stories to shape our moral and political horizons. We believe these stories fund virtuous societies and we ignore them at our collective peril. They are public truths and must be debated and contested in public ways.

Cardus is inspired by and works out of a long tradition of Christian social thought. This tradition has implications for how we think about economics, politics, art, sex and more. Our work is infused with the insights of this tradition, its virtues and its disciplines. Our work is conducted with humility in the service of the common good.