Thematic Description

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Romano Guardini's book "Der Gegensatz.” The conference is a collaboration among Pontifical Gregorian University (PUG), Faculty of Philosophy of Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo (Sant'Anselmo), Pontifical Teutonic Institute Santa Maria dell’Anima, Katholische Akademie, Guardini Stiftung, and CUA McLean Center for Study of Culture and Values. Under the auspice of the PUG Rome Catholic Studies Program.

The conference aims to address the crisis of thinking and to investigate the possible relevance of "thinking in contrapositions" (Denken in Gegensätzen) from a theological, spiritual, and interreligious perspective, as well as from a philosophical one. According to Guardini, the theoretical and hermeneutic foundation of epistemology, whereby two contrapositions (Gegensätze) constitute dynamically a tension in a space of relation. In contemplative knowledge (Anschauung), one form of knowing that is beyond thinking, along with the contrapositions that are unmixed and unseparated, forms a unit in tension. About the great figures of thinking (Denkergestalten), Guardini calls the exercise of thinking the ascesis of thinking (Askese des Denkens). In the context of his philosophy of the living-concrete, Guardini understands metánoia as a change of sense (Um-Sinnung). For Guardini, Socrates, Buddha and Christ, in a different yet related way, represent a change of sense in life and thinking. The conference ended with a day of “Applied Thinking” in which participating students provided their ideas and experiences on various ways of thinking in “contrapositions” in relation to their own scientific research. 

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