I. Challenges
Humankind is changing paradigms at an unprecedented speed
and depth: in science and technology, in the socio-economic and
political sphere, in the self-understanding of cultures and
societies, in the transformation of major religious entities and
the creation of new cultures and modes of being. And yet, we
need to ask: What are the constancies or consistencies in human
self-understanding needed in order to further the global process
of becoming-human?
Moreover, the human family still faces enormous challenges
when it comes to solving problems such as the creation of
conditions required to affirm the dignity of all members of the
human family, particularly in regard to such phenomena as
needless hunger and chronic unemployment, violence and
terrorism, injustice and exclusion, abuse of children and
abandonment of the elderly, analphabetism and ideological
manipulation, destruction of human values and of the natural
environment in which we are destined to live.
Hence the need to ask: What role must be played by Ethics
and Morality in the advancement of political and economic
processes, in science and technology? How to reconfigure the
humanizing mission of Education and the processes of
communication and/or diffusion of knowledge? In what sense must
the great religions of the world advance their own
self-understanding, their identity and their mission? How to
understand the role and the mission of Family and School in the
process of renewing humanity and so create the conditions of
possibility for a future that can be said to be more truly human
and, by the same token, even more divine than before?
The 2016
annual RVP-Seminar in Washington DC will focus on the issues of love and compassion,
of gratitude andresponsibility.
It will try to further the kind of human self-understanding that
is capable of bridging the multiple contributions of East
and West, of North and South, of Religion and Science, of Art
and Technology, of Freedom and Law, of self-interest and mutual
cooperation.
II. Response
Self and Other: Openness for Compassion
The focus will be philosophical, and
will explore the enigma of the passage from pathos to ethics,
that is, illuminating the liberating passage from the
self-centered ‘me and mine’ to
the Epiphany of the Other whenever it is given in the context of
authentic human encounters. Compassion has the
structure and the potential needed to
transform the human person both in terms of the dialectic of
immanence and transcendence as well as in regard to the
relational universe of each concrete human being.
Social Freedom: Compassion in the Polis/City
Human freedom is in need of
rediscovering the high moral value associated with compassion as
constituting a manifestation of humility and benevolence. To
refuse compassion or to be ungrateful before the Other, human or
divine, manifests a strange form of pride, which fastens on
self, takes good deeds for granted and, consequently, is
deprived of true lucidity. In contrast, freedom as compassion is
at the origin of especially positive emotions which are most
important for the social bond and the pursuit of fulfillment.
The Attraction of Beauty: Compassion as Motivating a
Progressive Globalization
To philosophically pursue the role of compassion across
cultures and civilizations is to search for cultural/spiritual
elements capable of transforming
human beings into citizens of a new polis,
ambassadors of that Kingdom that transcends and whose name is
Goodness or the domain of benevolent Justice. This is yet another
name forCompassion
which, as such, is inclusive of both Forgiveness and
Reconciliation.
Indeed, as we think through the
anthropological structure and the implications of compassion we
shall also begin to cross the cold boundaries of proper terms
and concepts into the aesthetic realm of beauty that in the
words of ancient Hindu Upanishads “warms the heart and unleashes
the limbs”. The world of today demands from all of us the firing
up of a new social imaginary in order to answer the major
ethical challenges of our present global condition.
Application for Participation
Applications for participation in this seminar should be sent by
email by April 10, 2016, to cua-rvp@cua.edu.
Participants cover their own travel costs; the RVP provides
simple room and board during the seminar. The seminar will be
conducted in English and held at the RVP Seminar Room: Gibbons
Hall B-12, 620 Michigan Avenue, North East, Washington, D.C.,
20064. Email: cua-rvp@cua.edu; Telephone: .
Please
enclose:
(1) a CV describing the
applicant's education,
professional positions and activities;
(2) a list of the applicant's publications;
(3) a letter stating the
applicant's interest
and involvement in this theme and its relation to his/her past
and future work in philosophy and/or related studies; and
(4) abstract of a paper the
applicant's might
want to be considered for presentation during the Seminar and
then submitted for eventual publication.