PHILOSOPHIE - Association internationale des professeurs de ...

AIPPh Documentation Leusden 2009
Besides, it is an action that makes an effective contribution to the competitiveness of the
European economy. In fact, languages are not something we can put on and off, they
are our own skin, an organ we need for surviving. Languages are the very heart of the
unity in diversity of the EU and are all equally necessary for pointing out the essence of
Europe’s intellectual identity as opposed to intellectual identities that have been shaped
by the monolingual option, as it is case, e.g., with the US, China, and India.
2.2 Cultural Identity
The objective is to provide access to the texts that have built the cultural consciousness
of the European people by developing digital resources for philosophy and the human
sciences in the principal European languages (Latin and Ancient Greek included). Cultural
history. Cultural identity and diversity are political issues. The point is multiculturalism
and interculturalism are not about giving answers, they are about questions to be raised.
Internet access makes new definitions of national identity, European identity, terrestrial
identity possible. Globally interconnected. It is Leibniz again and his dream of a universal
library—dans le cybionte.
2.3 Neohumanism Lost
The process initiated by the Bologna Conference in 1999 towards an economically,
environmentally, and culturally sustainable development has led to the constitution of
the European Research Area (ERA) and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), in
which research and education are in the process of being streamlined in all participating
countries. One of its first consequences was a long wished for increase in the number of
graduates all over Europe. Given that the main difficulty seems to lie in disseminating an
idea of science that were at the crossroad between basic and applied research, very
much in the spirit of the Bologna declaration, an answer to this difficulty is the studium
generale, which is a set of interdisciplinary modules aimed at presenting to students of
all disciplines the nucleus of European science and philosophy (from Aristotle’s Analytica
to Euclid’s Stoicheia, from Plato’s Politeia to Augustine’s Confessiones). At a number of
European universities, the studium generale is currently a program aimed at transmitting
Humanities methodologies and texts. It is both philosophy and reflection on culture, it is
cultural theory, cultural management, and artistic practice. The main goal of the studium
generale is orienting students in the years that precede their final choice of a profession.
For this reason, no degree is in studium generale. It is instead an auxiliary program
offered to all students. The stress is on the autonomous and reflective ability of
connecting among diverse disciplines, on thinking and acting beyond one’s own field, on
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