Among Democratic presidential candidates, frontrunner Elizabeth Warren has distinguished herself by her prolific policy proposals. Warren’s passion for implementation has changed the campaign landscape for the other candidates, presenting a contrast against candidates who run on personality more than proposals. Warren’s resourcefulness and reputation for earnest preparation have even filtered through to pop-culture consciousness.

Warren’s approach to policy also sets her apart from the candidate closest to her in philosophy (and in the polls) — Bernie Sanders. Warren emphasizes her firm belief in markets and Sanders identifies as a socialist, though Sanders’ account of social democracy, which stops short of public ownership of capital, does not offer a much more radical economic plan than Elizabeth Warren’s New Deal-esque vision.

What sets Warren apart from Sanders more than emphasis is her detailed planning. Warren’s unofficial motto, ‘I have a plan for that,’ reflects her core message: the achievability of reform.

By focusing on the implementation of her vision in such detail, Warren offers a real-world progressivism, one that echoed in her own life. Warren’s story reflects the consciousness-raising process in microcosm. A first-generation college student, Warren made her clothes and soon became a young mother who struggled with childcare. Later, she would recollect how support from her aunt gave her a much-needed advantage in balancing career and motherhood.

Warren, who had inherited Republican affinities, initially believed the American Dream was alive and well, as the young woman worked her way to a prestigious, white-collar career. However, throughout her extensive research on the causes of bankruptcy for middle and working-class families, companies, women, and elderly in an increasingly financialized and deregulated economy, Warren questioned her political allegiance. Based on her new information, she focused her professional life on addressing the rules of an economy that worked for an increasingly small minority. That same painstaking attention to information and the lived experiences of poverty and financial struggle also characterizes Warren’s approach to policy.

Warren’s focus on implementation exemplifies the notion of ‘praxis’. Praxis is an ancient Greek term with rich philosophical heritage, close in meaning to its English derivative — ‘practice’. More recent thinkers who used the term include Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt School. Critical theorists in particular use ‘praxis’ to express social transformation in action as distinguished against theory alone.

But what is ‘praxis’ specifically? In all of these thinkers, from Aristotle to Nietzsche, praxis is deeply intertwined with theory and dialectic. Praxis is the process and result of reflection and dialogue, rather than their absence.

For the philosopher of education Paulo Freire, praxis is social and emancipatory as well as theory-driven. Like educator Freire, Warren’s approach is pedagogical — she has a remarkable capacity to present the relevance of policy to life in ways accessible to non-experts. Warren’s campaign also stresses a horizontality between her and her constituents. While Warren is now drawing massive crowds, her signature behaviours include calling random everyday donors and ‘selfie lines’ where she can meet personally with thousands of people in each rally. She regularly reaches out to encourage young girls to be politically involved — a demographic not always courted by politicians.

Warren’s openness in sharing her proposals also makes a profound statement about democratic transparency. By showing her math from the earliest stages of her campaign, she radically shifted the terrain for her fellow runners, setting an entirely new baseline for accountability. Her candidness presupposes intelligence on the part of voters and raises the level of political discourse. Her detailed strategies toward accomplishing each goal transcend rhetoric and rallying-cries with actual programs that necessarily engage voters and fellow politicians.

Elizabeth Warren is a leader who allowed interpersonal dialogue and research to transform the trajectory of her career and political affiliations. Hopefully, she will help signal a new era in politics where we value citizens and politicians who do the same.