Research project 2014
Proposal: Interdisciplinary Research Project on Human Being
Host institution: University of Trieste (Italy)
The University of Trieste will act as the central host institution of the research project and will accordingly be responsible for providing the services and facilities necessary for its development. Its activities are nevertheless open to a large number of scholars and academics and research institutions for collaboration.
The University is exceptionally well placed to invstigate further and in depth the research topics of the research project on human being.A crossroads between the Central-European and the Mediterranean cultures, Trieste has always been a pole of attraction. Among its features, besides its geographic position a fundamental role is played by its historical and cultural background with the high technical and professional skills of its citizens which found their best expression in the ship-building industry.
Trieste is also the capital of Friuli - Venezia Giulia, a region with a special statute, bordering with Austria and Slovenia and a member of the CEI (Central- European Initiative). At the time of its full splendor - as a port and trading centre of vital importance for the economy of the Habsburg empire - many factors contributed to conferring its typical character to the city, so cherished by the most eminent names in international culture such as James Joyce, Sigmund Freud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Johann Winckelmann, not to mention Umberto Saba, Scipio Slataper, Italo Svevo, Virgilio Giotti and Pierantonio Quarantotti Gambini, who were all natives of Trieste.
The University is located in the urban area that counts nearly 250.000 inhabintants. It is moreover the site of the Area Science Park (see please at:
AREA Science Park is one of the leading multi-sectorial science parks in Europe. The AREA currently has over 1600 persons in its 70 companies, centres and institutes on the park, engaged in R&D, technology transfer, training, and specialized services and of other well known international scientific institutions, such as the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Founded in 1964 by Abdus Salam – Nobel Laureate –, the Centre operates under a tripartite agreement among the Italian Government and two United Nations Agencies, UNESCO and IAEA. Its mission is to foster advanced studies and research, especially in developing countries. While the name of the Centre reflects its beginnings, its activities today encompass most areas of physical sciences including applications.
Trieste is the centre of many others research institutions with international outstanding reputation:
with which the University is connected.
Title of the research project:
Human Being. World Openness and Openness of Human Development. Science and Religion (Philosophy) in Dialogue
Project Leader:
Antonio RUSSO
Project Co-Leader
Valter SERGO
in collaboration with:
1. Xavier Tilliette International Institute (Trieste and Florence)
2. Max Scheler Gesellschaft, Munich, Germany
3. Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm (Rome)
4.Pontifical Lateran University (Rome)
(Research Area Edith Stein)
5. University of Perugia
6. Pontifical Salesian University, Rome
7. University of Trento
1. Preliminary description of the project
a. Purpose and Aims of the Research Project
The project is designed with the goal of breaking down disciplinary barriers and to addressing big questions about Human being and their impact on the emerging technologies. The project is a deeper reflection of the international Conference held at the Gorizia Castle (Italy) on Human Beings: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives, in October 2-5, 2008. See Annexes and the attached Concluding Summary of the Conference of John H. Brooke, University of Oxford, UK. In addition, the submitted research project on Human Being is a further development of a 2 years project on Nature and Intentionality, coordinated by Antonio RUSSO and funded in 2009 by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research with 113.960 Euro (see under the name Antonio Russo at:
and
The project on Nature and Intentionality (or PRIN2009, Anno 2009 - Prot. 2009ZWY9HC) focused on Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition (Franz Brentano and his school, i.e. S. Freud, E. Husserl, C. Stumpf, H. Schell, H. Denifle, Th. Masaryk, etc.).The main goal of the research was to explore, and then to design an ideal map and the boundaries between two territories: the phenomenological domain and the analytic domain, to re-discover not only the same cultural background and their common cultural origins, but also the main point of contrast, the different emphasis, in which the figure of Franz Brentano is essential and the main referent, involving man's different fields of knowledge: from Cultural Anthropology to Psychology and Psychoanalysis, to phenomenologically oriented Philosophies, up to the recent perspectives of neuroethics. The main intention was to offer a new stimulus to the various and most important, continental and analytical, movements of Brentanian inspiration, not only in purely historical and philological terms, but also from a theoretical point of view.
The main results have been extensively published in German, English, French, Italian.
See, for instance:
1. Russo, Come Cornelio Fabro ha affrontato il pensiero di Franz Brentano. Con Aristotele contro il relativismo, in “Osservatore Romano” (Vatican City), May 19, 2012, p.4;
2. A. Russo, Franz Brentano and Cornelio Fabro: A Forgotten Chapter of the Brentanian Reception, in «Axiomathes«, 1 (2013), pp.1-9;
3. A. Russo, San Tommaso ed Aristotele nella formazione di Franz Brentano (1838-1917), in «Angelicum», 1 (2013), pp. 247-278;
4. A. Russo, L’idée de solidarité, in “Revue Théologique de Louvain”, 1, 2013, pp.55-81;
5. A. Russo, ed., Cornelio Fabro e Franz Brentano, Studium, Roma 2013, pp.1-260;
6. A. Russo, Franz Brentano e Heinrich Denifle (con un carteggio inedito), Studium, Roma 2014, pp.1-310;
7. A. Russo, Franz Brentano und Heinrich Denifle: Schüler des Aristoteles, in «Philosophisches Jahrbuch», 1 (2014), pp.125-151.
Today it is appropriate to speak at all of Human being as a question that in different ways has been debated since antiquity and has deeply affected Western philosophy and theology; and has been a theme of great interest, a particular focus of research both historical and contemporary, to historians and philosophers of science as well as to theologians.
A distinguished network of scholars, who have already published extensively on aspects of this debate and other scholars with a high reputation for work in the field of philosophy (science) and religion will explore the possible interdisciplinary spaces and dialogue in the outworking of evolutionary processes, offering the prospect of an extended and exciting collaboration.
The importance and the implications of the research on “Human Being” are unquestionable. The network of scholars coordinated in Trieste can offer innovation and expertise at the highest academic level on one of the key themes of the contemporary debate.
It seems important to re-open the debate for two, although not exclusively, reasons:
1. The first one is that the contemporary debate has been massively limited to an analytical point of view and that the richness and subtlety of non causalist interpretations, belonging to other traditions, have been unduly ignored.
2. The second one is that the reductionist perspective is currently facing important difficulties.
3. The idea to be worked out is that this renewed confrontation with other traditions should substantially contribute to the job.
b. Structure
The research project will organize itself into four areas, with each area concentrating on a different aspect of the same overall thematic. The entire program is directed by two principal investigators, with a high international reputation on the main aspects of this debate and shall be over-viewed by a multidisciplinary and international Advisory Board. composed of outstanding scholars, exceptionally well placed to investigate further and in depth the possible space of exchanges between the sciences and religion.
The Board shall cooperate with the project leaders for the final supervision. Their members, coming from several scientific and humanities disciplines, are there to help provide the research project with new insights and inputs and an in-depth understanding of current and emerging trends as well as a historical look at how these trends have shaped up over time, to maintain the highest standards in carrying out rigorous and impartial research. In short, the Advisory Board can offer expertise at the highest academic level on the key themes in the proposal.
Moreover, the project has an international and multidisciplinary Academic Staff that shall provide additional interdisciplinary work and support the 2 project leaders and the Advisory Board in the duties they perform for the Research: The Academic staff is composed by graduate assistants, who in their different fields are promisingly working, with particular emphasis on how religion should respond to the contemporary scientific approach.
c. Short description of the four Areas
1. First Area: World Openness
After a preliminary introduction, the initial step will consist in the attempt to set up the context of the anthropological discourse. That means: the first Area’s (World Openness) intended aim is to map out, in a systematic and critical way, The Conference will discuss the New Research Pilot Project on “Human nature: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives”, mapping the context, the background, the latest trends and evolutions in Italy and Europe, and the delivery of headline targets at the national and international level.the latest trends, evolutions and tensions within the field that may be called the World Openness of the Human being in the contemporary debate. The ambition is to reconsider the main discussions and problems, so as to obtain a rigorous and well delineated framework, and so to offer new inputs to the contemporary debate on science (philosophy) and religion.
Modern philosophical anthropology takes its point of departure from two opposing conceptions: that attributed to Max Scheler (1874-1928) and that of Helmut Plessner (1892- 1985).
With Scheler and Plessner the anthropological discourse take into account the challenges emerging from the sciences as well as from the humanities and the religion.
According to Max Scheler, philosophical anthropology is nothing but the quintessence of philosophy itself. According to Plessner it follows the methodology and achievements of the empirical sciences of Human Being in the form of an ‘integrative’ discipline.
Scheler, who lectured in Goettingen from 1910 to 1911, where Edith Stein was one of his students, hearkens back to the traditional determination of Human Being as loving being. In his major works he criticizes the point of view of Husserl, Kant and German Idealism, focuses on human feelings and considers the love to be the essence of the nature of man, of human existence. Scheler defines the logic of love as different from the logic of pure reason, following the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, an author “very dear to Maurice Blondel, both as an example and an inspiration”. Starting from Pascal “Blondel was drawing out the express tendencies of Pascal’s thought in a more systematic or, as he says, a more technical way than Pascal had left his thoughts”.
Plessner refused the Christian metaphysics of Scheler and embraced the orientation of biological, medical, psychological, and, in the extended sense, social-scientific research, and he does this with the conceptual goal of a structural theory of Human being.
Common to both thinkers in the characterisation of Human Being is the concept of world-openness. According to Scheler Human Being is the “X that can behave in a world-open manner in an unlimited extent”. According to Plessner, Human being is “characterised by an ‘ex-centric positionality’, whereby his existence, that possesses no fixed centre, is described as the unity of mediated immediacy and natural artificiality. In other words, Plessner means that the nature of human beings, from the very beginning, is an artificial one, i. e. is too plastic if compared with that of other living beings and insofar its conduct needs to be fixed in an artificial way.
This opens up a broad horizon of possible interpretations of Human Being, and to this extent a broad discussion for an answer to the question what a human being is. These two different approaches, studied by the disciplines of natural sciences and cultural science with different scientific methods, will be the starting point and the crucial stimulus of the overall project.
2. Second Area: Openness of Human Development
The concept of World –Openness embraces and includes the aspect of the Openness of Human Development. And so capitalizing on the resultsThe Conference will discuss the New Research Pilot Project on “Human nature: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives”, mapping the context, the background, the latest trends and evolutions in Italy and Europe, and the delivery of headline targets at the national and international level. of the previous research, the second Area (Openness of the Human Development) will take into account and analyze (inside and outside Philosophy and Science) the theoretical sense and importance of the openness that affects all phases of human development, both from an ontogenetic and from a phylogenetic point of view.
The central meaning or essence of the human being is “a loving act of participation by the core of the human being in the essence of all things”; and so it is an inexhaustible loving willingness to be open to the world, to that which is other, a going beyond oneself, directed to the transcendence, to the infinite. There is a deply, hidden in human being, order of love, a capacity which begins with the rank of sensible values and tends toward to the realization of an higher value and, at the end, of the value of the holy. In our technological era this point of view appears to be a pioneering work, full of suggestions. It is an attempt to save from any reductive idea of human being as tool-maker or as a mere object the core meaning and the absolute value of the human being.
This standpoint has incalculable ethical and social values. It assumes that there is a process of realization that needs and is associated at the very beginning with realizing factors: historical, economics, politicals, socials. The human being is conceived as a “member of a totality”; his experience is always an “experiencing with one other” connected to the responsibility for others, the corresponsability for community. It means that the acts of human beings are fulfilled with reference to a community, are acts of a member of a community. We belong to a community with the other, in which there is a sense of solidarity or “representable solidarity” and anyone can represents and has to take responsibility for the others.
Furthermore it is a foundation of the modern anthropology, that the current reductionist approach has largely ignored or rejected; and involves crucial aspects already well delineated and discussed in the twentieth century by several main figures (M. Blondel, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Teilhard de Chardin, H. Jonas), who explicitly took into account the modern scientific approach and the challenges of religion, especially with regard to the place of the human being in the cosmos..
3. Third Area: Openness of the Human Development and Emerging Technologies
The Third Area will benefit from the interactions of the previous areas and focus itself on the emerging technologies and their impact on social sciences, trying to offer contributions for instance about the Emerging Technologies and Law, anthropology and future, etc. This work will be centered on some central implications and transformations currently under way in the field of contemporary social sciences.
Today, the philosophy of human openness is being given concrete shape. There are two reasons why this is so. The first is the biological science of evolution and its application to human origins. Recent discoveries, fueled by advanced analysis of archaeological remains and of archaic DNA, create an entirely new view of the complex origins of the human species. Throughout this process, technology plays a pivotal role. Advances in simple technologies led to better nutrition, nuclear families, extended childhood and adolescence, and dramatic increases in cognitive ability and cultural capacity. The second reason why human openness is taking concrete shape is because of the accelerating pace of technological advance. Today’s technologies have advanced and converged in unexpected ways, setting the stage for a whole new era in human and cosmic evolution. Through human technology, the cosmos can act upon itself in unprecedented ways. The question of human openness is no longer merely a speculative question but one with tangible consequences for the future of humanity and of the cosmos.
Some of these themes were discussed in the 1950s by Julian Huxley and Teilhard de Chardin. In the 1960s the theologian Karl Rahner reflected at length on what he called the “self-transcendence” or inherent openness of the cosmos. Human beings, Rahner suggested, stand at a distinct place. Because of science, we are uniquely conscious of the self-transcendence or openness of the cosmos. Because we have technologies that are ever more powerful, we can dare to imagine the use of technology as a means to the future of creation. Some of Rahner’s key ideas are recently echoed by popular writer Ted Chu, whose 2014 Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential also suggests that human beings are distinctly aware and equipped to play a role in the coming future of the cosmos.
As the power of technology grows, so does the urgency behind interdisciplinary dialogue on technology’s future impact. The Third Area turns to this question. It builds on previous areas, which explore the openness of the human in the context of the openness of the cosmos. Here, however, the question turns to the role of technology as a distinctly human contribution. How does technology—that of today and tomorrow—equip human beings to play a pivotal role in contributing to the cosmic future?
4. Fourth Area: Human Beings. Theological Perspectives
The fourth Area in the light of the knowledge afforded by natural/biological science and philosophy, will be dedicated to compare, integrate and further develop the results previously acquired by the other three areas of the research project. We will investigate how does the foregoing account of Human nature affect the doctrine of creation and has extremely important ethical and social implications. We will take seriously into account and discuss some of the most outstanding contemporary theologians (H. de Lubac, K. Rahner, A. Farrer, J. Zizoulas, W. Pannenberg, J. Moltmann, W. Kasper), who are highly regarded and have been very influential and developed a response to the nature of evolutionary anthropological ideas.
The signifiance of these reflections about World Openness and Openness of Human Development for the current debates on the complementarity of scientific and religious anthropological approach, is extremely suggestive and “this is why it is worth analyzing these reflections in greater details, even if one does not share the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of the philosophy of values”.
This perspective might transcend its empirical context (first half of the twentieth century) and led to a broad interdisciplinary dialogue. In other words, his importance for the dialogue “lies above all in the fact that he can take the historical relativity of our moral views just as seriously as this relativism, but without being obliged to interpret it in the sense of a fundamental equity in rank. On the contrary…shows how the historical character of the perception of values is compatible with the objective evidential character of the validity of these values…is able to integrate empirical-historical investigation into to the question posed by moral philosophy, his approach proves superior also to the sheer rejection of naturalistic moral theories by analytic ethics”. (E. Schockenhoff).
1) Outocomes
The overall ambition is to undertake a constructive collaboration between theological Universities and State Universities involved in this issue.This means that a deeper intellectual effort is needed to pave the way towards a remarkable boosting of the dialogue between science, philosophy and religion; and to meet the objective of discussing and promoting interdisciplinary exchanges on such vitally important topics as Science, Religion, Philosophy by not only leading scholars but also students and members of the general public.
Moreover, it is our intention to made all the documents and texts public and easily available to those interested, in order to organize the broadest debate around the themes discussed in the research project. The texts will be published online, and a dedicated webpage is already under construction. Part of these funds should be used for public events, advertising, publication of newsletters, printing, etc. It is appropriate to speak at all of Human being as a question that in different ways has been debated since antiquity and has deeply affected Western philosophy and theology. The challenge to their respective philosophies of nature has been a subject of great interest to historians and philosophers of science as well as to theologians.
A distinguished group of scholars has already published extensively on aspects of this debate. Other scholars with a high international reputation for work in the field of science (philosophy) and religion shall explore the possible spaces for mutual exchanges in our technological and evolutionary world-view. All that can offer the prospect of an extended and exciting collaboration. In short, the project can offer expertise at the highest academic level on one of the key themes in the contemporary discussion.
The international and interdisciplinary network of selected leading scademics, fostering the dialogue between science (philosophy) and religion, coordinated at the University of Trieste (Italy), includes scholars from across the disciplines, who have already published extensively on the main aspects of the submitted research project on Human being.
1.
franzbrentano.eu/en/ with the support of the Trieste University
. We trust that consolidation of exchange with scholars of international high reputation, will continue to deepen and prove highly beneficial and rewarding academically as leading thinkers.
