NOVUS
The Soul of Human Flourishing in Contemporary Life, Faith & Culture
NOVUS is a nonprofit research and formation center devoted to renewing the soul and recovering a deeper understanding of the human person and the shape of a life well lived.
Through scholarship, public thought, and formative practice, we bring philosophical clarity and Christian wisdom to the central questions of human flourishing, including those raised by modern technology.
Why NOVUS, Why Now
The conditions of ordinary life are changing quickly. Technologies increasingly shape attention, judgment, relationships, institutions, and the habits by which people are formed.
Questions about the soul, the human person, spiritual life, and the conditions of genuine flourishing can no longer remain private or abstract. They have become public, practical, and urgent.
NOVUS exists to bring those questions back into view and to pursue them with seriousness, clarity, and public consequence.
“Whoever controls the definition of the mind, controls the definition of humankind itself, and culture, and history.”
— Marilynne Robinson
Absence of Mind
What NOVUS does.
NOVUS conducts research, develops public resources, fosters spiritual and moral formation, and works with leaders and institutions seeking a deeper account of the human person.
Our work addresses enduring questions about consciousness, character, attention, love, truthfulness, and the good life, while applying those insights to contemporary challenges, including technology and artificial intelligence.
Who NOVUS is for.
NOVUS exists for leaders, builders, scholars, institutions, and those who want a deeper vision of the human person and a more richer and more meaningful account of what a life well lived requires in contemporary life.
“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man. Like the rich man of old, we have foolishly minimized the internal of our lives and maximized the external. We have absorbed life in livelihood.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
The Man Who Was a Fool (1961)
How we work.
NOVUS works in the places where questions of human flourishing have become immediate and public: in culture, technology, education, leadership, and the life of faith.
We ask how contemporary life is reshaping attention, love, truthfulness, responsibility, and the life of the soul. We bring those questions into conversation with our shared lived practices.
Where we work.
MISSSION AND VISION
Mission
NOVUS is a nonprofit philosophy research-and-development center that restores the reality and significance of soul, for applied wisdom to the decisions shaping contemporary life, especially amid accelerating technology. We do this by cultivating knowledge of the soul through careful research, teaching, and practices that change how people live, as it changes who they are.
Vision
A culture that understands what a human person is, and what human life is for, will prioritize care of the soul. Its choices will be guided by the pursuit of becoming the kind of people who can live in truth, love, and justice. In that culture, technology is a servant of people, never their substitute, an instrument for the common good, not a depersonalizing system.
INDEPENDENCE & SUPPORT
Pursuing reality together.
NOVUS is independently funded by partners who see the need for a public space dedicated to restoring knowledge of the soul and its indispensability for the spiritual formation of people, communities, and cultures toward truth, goodness, and beauty.
NOVUS separates funding from research methods and conclusions. We refuse funding or partnerships that compromise clarity, accountability, or public trust.