Description / Goal
Rationale
Laboratory of Research on Practical and Applied Philosophy (L.R.P.A.Ph.)
University of the Aegean, School of Humanities Department of Preschool Education Sciences and Educational Design, Rhodes (Greece)
1st International Biennale on Practical Philosophy.
‘‘Philosophy in Praxis. The philosophical gesture: political, ethical, educational, artistic engagements’’
27, 28, 29 April 2018
At a time of intense doubt concerning the characteristics of the “crises” which affect here and there the western societies, a certain social demand arises
At a time of intense doubt concerning the characteristics of the “crises” which affect here and there the western societies, a certain social demand arises towards the contribution of philosophy to the search for the meaning of existence and the experience of a coherent life. It is still possible, for some thirty years now, to talk about a certain “desire for reflection” which, at the level of philosophical activities, is expressed, among other things, through numerous practices, more or less innovative, such as philosophical cafés, philosophy workshops for children, especially “philosophical events”, where the “desire for philosophy” and the “desire for art” are met, or even a whole production for the general public from philosophy magazines, through corridors with books for “personal development”, up to cultural sites in shopping centers.
In this context, it is easy to guess that the philosopher’s activity runs the risk of losing its particularity drowing in an amorphous mixture of various activities, centered on, for example, spirituality, ecology, orientalism, healing, self-awakening or creativity. Conversely, however, an attitude to unconditional denial of all new forms of philosophical practice, although potentially capable of reinforcing a refolding to the idea of a university as ‘temple’, could cut off philosophers from the movements of the world and from activities, with which people try, exactly, to realize the primary philosophical plan: philosophy is a set of exercises, because it is “a way of life, a form of life, a choice of life” (Hadot, P., La philosophie comme manière de vivre [Philosophy as a way of life], Paris: Albin Michel, 2001, p. 154).
Therefore, without abandoning its anchor in a history and a set of methods that make up its particularity as a cognitive field, philosophy must also accept and take over its practical character, which is about:
- its ability to help in decision-making (it is practical, what is involved in the process of choosing, consultation, engagement),
- its ability to be incarnated in a form of life (it is practical, what is concretized in gestures, either actions or attitudes), or even its embodied form,
- its ability for discovery and creation of meaning for human activities (it is practical, what can register its meaning within the experience of persons),
- its possibility of questioning, criticizing and discussing in reference with this which remains problematic within human existence (it is practical, whose meaning remains open, without “truth” or a definitive answer).
The ambition of the Biennale organizers and the Laboratory of Research on Practice and Applied Philosophy is therefore to question, to explore the concept of philosophical gesture within a complexity that could not conceal the superficial visibility of its meaning: what is a philosophical gesture? How it can be characterized? How do we make a philosophical gesture? In what practices it is recorded? And on the verge of all these: are there, finally, gestures which are pure philosophical?
It is, of course, an ambition not so recent: from the ancient practices of self in philosophical schools to the contemporary political commitment in the name of philosophical principles, passing through Marxist debates over philosophy as “theory of theoretical practice” or from existentialist reflection about attitudes and actions through which the person “chooses oneself”, philosophy has often be confronted with its practical appearances. It seems, however, that the concept of ‘‘philosophical gesture’’ continues to be insufficiently clarified, especially in a context whose profoundly problematic character we have shown above; in its “modesty”, implies at least a rupture with prominent philosophies, with their theoretical demands for the determination of their practices and purposes. In fact, this term is proposed to demonstrate, describe, problematize and process the geometric locus or the intersection between the theoretical and the practical, at the exact point where they are articulated.
Therefore, the question in relevance with the concept of philosophical gesture has no intention of condemning certain types of philosophical practices (metaphysics, for example) neither to promote a single view of a philosophical gesture summarizing in itself the essence of practical philosophy. Biennale’s aim, therefore, is not to construct the ‘‘truth’’ of philosophical gesture, but to highlight the abundance and the complementarity of meanings, sometimes of controversial ones, of which we are attempting the division into four axis of work, to which, respectively, will also be distributed the proposals for Announcements, Symposia and Workshops:
The philosophical gesture towards the City, from Plato and onwards, wanted to be radical. After Socrates’ death, the conflict between the philosopher and the City, as analyzed by Hannah Arendt, “had reached its point of paroxysm” and “is in this situation where Plato conceived the idea of the tyranny of the Truth” (Qu’est-ce que la politique? [What is politics?]), Paris: Seuil, Coll. Points, 2014, p. 59): the philosopher had to be a king. The figure of the philosopher’s “prince’s counselor”, continuing to exist in the heart of the Republic, is its heritage. Today it is eliminated. However, the “need” for philosophy in the City is not eliminated with it. An “austere” philosophy, succeeds a philosophy whose gestures aspire to participate in the common sense, in this sense that “not only we have commonly but in addition makes us capable to integrate a common world and thus to make it feasible” (op. cit., p. 90) or even to disengage or to move away from it by understanding it as an epistemological obstacle (Bachelard, G., La formation de l’esprit scientifique, [Formation of the scientific mind], Paris: Vrin, 1938). However, philosophy within this common space does not seems to have any advantage; will it have a role? Is there a special gesture for the philosopher in favor of this common space, which is difficult to be constructed and recognized?
For many men and women of our world today, the search of the self, the search of personal identity, passes as “personal development,” which has become the modern form of Bildung. However, such an important phenomenon cannot be only the result of fashion. It reaches fundamental social and cultural developments. It deeply concerns the contemporary identity: what we are, how we perceive ourselves as human beings.
On the other hand, we cannot avoid realizing that the educational model that has been imposed, largely ignores all the tradition of moral gestures and existential exercises. The idea according to philosophy would be a global form of education is very old. By studying the ancient texts, Pierre Hadot insisted that philosophy, because it is an art of life, is essentially a set of varied practices and exercises, not the construction of a technical language intended for specialists (Hadot, P., Exercices spirituels et Philosophie antique [Spiritual exercises and Ancient Philosophy], Paris: Albin Michel, 2002).
This axis therefore, will bring to the light those minimal gestures that organize or disrupt ethics in plural environments, giving precisely emphasis on this which allows human person to be formed in different circumstances which at the same time built and challenge her. In this specific frame we will be also interested, for example, in philosophical intervention in clinical conditions. Because, in fact, if this intervention is closely related to caring for the other in the heart of a fully philosophical ethic, equally reflects the problematic of experience: isn’t philosophical intervention intending to give meaning to health and illness as a purely human experience? On the other hand, we want to understand how philosophical intervention reveals inner layers to the level of ethics, as it is conditioned by to the conditions of the educational profession: which would be the gestures that would emancipate ethics as a movement of reflection?
Whether in the formation of the self or in the education of young people, education could not be exhausted in some operative actions (integration, training, transmission, evaluation, socialization, framing and so on). It is rather presented as a set of philosophical gestures intended to make us better or, more moderately, to help us live a life worthwhile to experience, that is, a philosophical life.
Nowadays a model that is marked by the utilitarianism and technocratic design of education (a model of skills, among others) promotes a technicalist perception of education, which is opposed to numerous practices that draw from sources of ancient education, the humanitarian Renaissance, the Bildung or, more recently, from the galaxy of the new Education, since the latter is not limited to ‘‘teaching techniques’’, but still carries a philosophical and political plan.
Biennale will therefore be able to investigate at least two types of problems:
* On a conceptual level, it will be interesting to explore the limits of the concept of ‘‘gesture’’ in education distinguishing it from concepts, like those of exercises, practices, actions, attitudes, but also associating it with them. In what sense smile to a child or reprimand it, are philosophical gestures? In what sense professional gestures in the field of education can be called “philosophical”?
* On a practical level, participations can focus on examples of philosophical pedagogical gestures and on their implementation. In this field, day-to-day experiences in classrooms and educational spaces could be co-examined with practices in which are lead by specific pedagogical and educational trends .
Modern art and contemporary philosophy know today a common adventure. The boundaries between art and philosophy are confused. There is also a talk about ‘‘philosophical inspiration of modern art’’ (Moeglin-Delcroix, A., Les artistes contemporains et la philosophie [Contemporary artists and philosophy], Revue d’esthétique, 44, 2003). The artist not only reads the philosophers and is being inspired by them, but registers the philosophical question to the artistic action. “Performances” are basicaly questions of experience: they accept the challenge that, according to Dewey, art puts in philosophy, ‘‘a challenge that as a stake has the understanding, widening and improvement of experience’’ (Barbereau, Y., ‘‘Expérience et performance. Fragments d’un dialogue pragmatique’’ [Experience and performance. Fragments of pragmatist dialogue] in: Moeglin-Delcroix, op. cit.). To what extent philosophy can accept this challenge in its own self, in the bay of its own action in its particularity? To what extent can philosophical gesture be possible to participate in this understanding, this widening and this enlargement of experience? Philosophical experience and artistic experience, philosophical gesture and artistic gesture can feed one another, co-work? These questions and these practices, common in art and philosophy, however, find their end in education. Not only references to art and artists are multiplied as educational alternatives, but increasingly educational initiatives attempt to combine artistic and philosophical intervention.
In the framework of the four axes rationale
- Axis 1: Political: Philosophical gestures and life in the City
- Axis 2: Ethical: Philosophical gestures, formation & transformation of the self, orientation of life
- Axis 3: Education: Philosophical gestures and the culture of mankind
- Axis 4: Artistic: philosophical gestures and aesthetic experiences
Biennale will be developed in four parts:
Ι. Conference
Coordinators:
- Axis 1: Adalberto Dias de Carvalho (Porto)
- Axis 2 : Didier Moreau (Paris 8) et Jacques Quintin (Sherbrooke)
- Axis 3 : Jean-François Dupeyron (Bordeaux)
- Axis 4 : Alain Kerlan (Lyon 2)
ΙΙ. Symposia
According to Guidelines
ΙΙΙ. Workshops:
Philosophical gesture in praxis
Main goal of Workshops is the questioning, problematizing, deepening, challenging, activating, multiplying of the praxeological experience and the emergence/creation of experimentation spaces with/for philosophy through its representations, hermeneutics and various forms of growth in the contemporary fields of education, culture, society and politics. This need of challenge is related to Walter Benjamin’s conception about the Crisis of the Experience, which Giorgio Agamben extended furthemore. The “poverty” of experience characterizes our modern times. Isn’t this deficit of experience that all these numerous offers of personal growth in a blooming market seek to “repair”? Philosophy can’t be satisfied only by denouncing such efforts. In front of this crisis of the experience, the “poverty” of experience, what can philosophy do as an experience? What can philosophy do in order to restore the experience, not only theoretically, but also in a practical way? What is a philosophical experience? How does it participate in one self’s shaping?
Workshops try to suggest/create philosophical experiences, “exercises of thought” (Arendt, H., ‘‘The Gap between Past and Future’’, in: Between Past and Future: Eight exercises in political thought, New York: Viking Press, 1968) through at least four challenges: the experimental meanings, the authentic inquiring questions, the dialogical process and the philosophizing body. Participants may also use materials conventionally non – philosophical (texts of literature, works of art, etc). Each workshop constitutes a mechanism for a reflection upon the problematic of the Biennale.
Coordinator: Elena K. Theodoropoulou (Greece/University of Aegean)
ΙV. Experimentations and Practices:
Philosophical gesture exhibited
The aim of workshops is to offer participants of the Biennale the chance to experience and share the practical dimension of philosophy and, in the same spirit, to experiment with this dimension. Analogically, the space of performances and exhibition offers the possibility to view and reflection a set of realizations, where philosophical gesture, implicated in different forms of praxis (artistic, cultural, educational, clinical) constitutes also a cultural and social gesture. These realizations, productions, creations, testimonies, offered in the form of exhibitions, artistic performances, movies, educational interventions in situ, will repeat and reassume the main questions of the Biennale.
Coordinators: Elena Κ. Theodoropoulou (Greece/University of Aegean), Alain Kerlan (France/University of Lyon2)