For thousands of young Europeans, questionings from the Humanities are more relevant than ever despite of the favoured cultural pessimism inherent to questionings relative to the Humanities and Cultural Studies. With the particular understanding of continually growing economical pressure at universities insistently perceiving philosophical questionings, which are essential to our life and the development and benefit of our society, as superfluous and as such confining them to marginality, more and more students feel the need to establish a bordercrossing exchange with other areas of scientific and cultural life.
The philosophical academy has been founded with the purpose of investing an interdisciplinary discourse between students from all disciplines and nationalities besides the universitary field, to show them new perspectives, to mediate new contacts and to grant them new impulses that may impact a further scientific career. It seems to us that this is an urgent issue and a meaningful task, especially at a time, when each and every person in the field of Philosophy and Cultural Studies finds herself relentlessly concerned with the question, as notorious and infamous, about the legitimation of its existence and its usefulness.
The 1 st philosophical academy will be held in the cultural community of Rauris in Salzburg. In one of the most magnificent cultural landscapes of Austria, we would like to provide a Forum for young people keen on Sciences and Culture, where the recognized limits can be surpassed through the uprising of new horizons and chances on thought free of prejudice.
For our first symposion ETHICS - BETWEEN INFLATION AND PRIGGISHNESS - which will be held this year, we have consciously chosen a broad theme, which is relevant to all young scientists and which to no doubt has challenged our thinking ever and may also have triggered and troubled us ever since in one or the other way.
In this sense I am expecting interesting and intellectually inspiring lectures and discussions in the Rauristal and I am looking forward to your attendance and lively participation.