SPECIAL PROGRAMS
1. Intercultural Dialogue: Europe, World, and Humanity in the 21st Century – Dialogue of Cultures – Culture in Dialogue
In order for the establishment of the intercultural dialogue to fundamentally contribute to the formation of future European society and appurtenant political decisions it is necessary to enable such a dialogue primarily in the elementary contexts that had historically rendered it possible, but have precisely as historical possibilities become also problematic. Europe, therefore, cannot simply accept the process of the globalization of the world, but should find a response to this development, especially with regards to the responsibility towards humanity, from which our understanding of culture originates. This perhaps represents the central meaning and the sense not only of a dialogue within culture, but also of the dialogue between cultures.
Thematic scope
> Understanding and encountering within culture and between cultures as specific European challenges.
> Historicity as the “identity” of Europe.
> Philosophical presuppositions of European self-understanding.
> Spaces of art as places for European encounters.
> Language of literature and European conversation.
> Christianity and Europe; Europe with regards to the dialogue between religions.
> A common ethos and the ethics of individuality.
> Europe between the own and the alien: geopolitical borders and boundaries.
> Diversity of cultures: strength or weakness of Europe?
> Globalization and the change of the sense of culture.
> Europe as “knowledge society”: a response to globalization?
> Intercultural understanding and the future of common European politics.
2. The Crisis of Freedom
The understanding of freedom has become one of the central problems within the contemporary general social crisis: there exist not only the pronounced tendencies for its limitation, but also the very foundations upon which our comprehension of freedom is based are falling into oblivion. The age of transition after “the end of ideologies” is defined by various social demagogies, capital manipulations, social tensions, and value indifference that under the cloak of the ensured freedom for all cannot disguise the uncertainty of the freedom of individuality.
Thematic scope
> Philosophical aspects of the contemporary crisis of freedom.
> Socio-economic crisis and critical state of humanity.
> Freedom of individuality and social freedom.
> Freedom with regards to historical, religious, and cultural comprehensions.
> Freedom of the media in the grasp of politics and capital.
> Civil society and the freedom of (public) speech.
> Law and the crisis of human rights.
> Freedom as the element of political responsibility.
> Education reforms and academic autonomy.
> Artistic expression as the space of freedom.
> Economic conditioning of scientific research.
> Ecology and economy in the rift of freedom.
3. Cultural and Natural Heritage