Orders of Worth
Orders of worth names the plurality of value systems that coexist and compete in modern societies. Developed by Boltanski with Laurent Thévenot in On Justification (1991), the framework identifies six distinct grammars of evaluation: the inspired order valuing creative genius; the domestic order valuing tradition and hierarchy; the civic order valuing collective welfare; the market order valuing competitive exchange; the industrial order valuing efficiency and productivity; and (added later) the projective order valuing networking and adaptability. Each order establishes its own tests of worth, and most practical disputes involve conflicts between orders. AI disrupts the tests by which worth has been evaluated across multiple orders simultaneously.
In the AI Story
The framework emerged from Boltanski and Thévenot's observation that when people justify decisions in everyday disputes — at work, in families, in civic life — they invoke not a single moral system but a plurality of them, each with its own characteristic vocabulary, its own paradigmatic figures, its own tests of worth. The genius in the inspired order proves worth through original creation. The patriarch in the domestic order proves worth through lineage and deference. The citizen in the civic order proves worth through service to the common good. The entrepreneur in the market order proves worth through successful exchange.
Most conflicts are not between good and evil but between competing orders making incompatible claims. The worker asserting civic dignity against market valuation, the artist asserting inspired originality against industrial metrics, the parent asserting domestic tradition against market convenience — these are not disputes that can be resolved by appeal to a single standard. They require negotiation across orders, or the establishment of compromises that draw on multiple orders simultaneously.
AI poses a distinctive challenge because it disrupts tests of worth across multiple orders at once. In the inspired order, AI-generated creative work raises the question of what authenticity means when the creative act is distributed between human and machine. In the industrial order, AI collapses the relationship between time and output that efficiency metrics depended on. In the market order, AI transforms the economics of expertise, making competence abundant while making judgment scarce. In the projective order, AI reshapes what connection and mobility mean when the machine is always available, always responsive, always in the network.
The framework is diagnostic, not prescriptive. It does not tell us which order should govern; it reveals the orders at play in any given dispute and enables more precise analysis of what is actually being contested.
Origin
Boltanski and Thévenot developed the framework through analysis of dispute situations — workplace conflicts, civic controversies, family disagreements — and found that participants consistently invoked recognizable grammars of justification. The six orders they identified corresponded to six distinct philosophical traditions each grounding a characteristic form of worth.
Key Ideas
Plurality of value systems. Modern societies contain multiple coexisting, incompatible orders of worth.
Tests of worth. Each order establishes its own standards for evaluating persons and things.
Compromise formations. Most practical arrangements draw on multiple orders simultaneously, producing compromises that are stable but fragile.
AI as cross-order disruption. Artificial intelligence disrupts tests of worth across inspired, industrial, market, and projective orders at once.
Diagnostic, not prescriptive. The framework analyzes disputes without adjudicating them.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, On Justification: Economies of Worth (Princeton, 2006)
- Laurent Thévenot, 'Pragmatic Regimes Governing the Engagement with the World' (2001)
- Paul Blokker and Andrea Brighenti, 'Creating a Public Space Through Dispute' (2011)