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Philosophy as Inquiry and Way of Life - congress in Athens 2013

Athens is an empty city around this time. Those who inquire about life, they have gone elsewhere, if not into the mountains for cool and fresh air, then to places which are directly beside the sea.

One poet who would describe this landscape in certain terms is Seferis. He would call this land 'closed', and not only because it is surrounded by mountains. There exist no longer any rivers, no wells, writes Seferis, so that the loneliness to be felt can be compared to the love we have experienced, and then lost. Birds circle up in the air above the mountain peaks. The pine trees sing in the wind. But on the ground it is rare that the houses could be constructed differently when such precondition exist.

The precondition of Greece in 2013 is a mounting deficit, and not knowing when the austerity will stop spiraling still further downward, people have stopped inquiring because their dreams and hence visions have been broken. It can be compared to broken glass lying around in a now empty street as if the accident happened yesterday and only these traces are left.

What to do? Will the World Philosophy Congress inquire into how this crisis became possible, and will there be applied something like a just measure to know how to counter this economic injustice? Doubt may be allowed.

It will matter what is done to inquire about Greek reality. To get to know it in all its nuances, it will take time for there are many contradictions. Only after having made some crucial experiences and listened to the stories told by the people, then it will be possible to clarify a rather confusing picture with here talk about an economic crisis and just across the street full cafes and in the ports countless yachts while the northern suburbs of Athens reveal countless villas with swimming pools. Where is the real poverty? The unemployed? The homeless? The ones without work?

It all depends whether or not the philosophers coming to Athens shall find someone who can show them aspects of daily life. This reality includes a waiter in a cafe and restaurant. He is the only one in his family who has a job. His mother of 41 was employed until three years ago when the factory she worked for closed down. The father is ten years older and when asked what does he do, the answer is 'nothing'. His younger sister was a teacher for small children until she caught pneumonia of the most serious kind and therefore is now without work. The waiter's dream is to get out of Greece as soon as possible. And he is tired from too much work. He has been working since he was 15 years of age.

Also the place where the World Congress of Philosophy is going to be held, says something. It is a building build solely with cement. It shows what education is all about in this country for students are brought up to learn but one language, the 'language of cement'. Yes, this material is resilient and can protect houses against possible earthquakes, but it is also a material which is insensitive to light. Naturally technical improvements in the meantime can alter it a bit, and as the architect Jürgen Eckhardt pointed out, this material allowed architects to rediscover what the Ancient Greeks knew how to construct a long time ago, namely to have again high vaults. It means the possibility to create huge spaces without pillars obstructing the view, but has become of it, that is demonstrated by the New Acropolis Museum: a most aggressive building with many spaces wasted or left meaningless. Thus this material does leave something to desire and it says that an imitation of what were the feats of the Ancient Greeks are not that easily to be imitated. There remains the prime question but what will happen to those students in future, if they were educated in such an atmosphere and learned to speak only such a language?

However, there is one painter one should not forget when dipping into this atmosphere: the sun. There is light everywhere, and thus even the most ugliest of all places can look beautiful. Yet it cannot distract from the surroundings of Athens. They appear to have been torched and left dry as if no water flows. If Seferis said this is a closed land, then the inquiry would have to be directed towards this landscape. It says a lot about the need to find not only water but as well from preventing that it flows down the mountain side. Naturally over centuries soil erosion has done its work. The rocks are often blank. Nothing can grow there anymore. If the Congress could, however, evoke a plan to plant trees on the surrounding mountings, then this would be something. Already Plato noted that fires but also the construction of the ships and defense fortifications meant the loss of trees on these mountains. How to undo that loss of an environment in which trees would still spend shade, and therefore allow as well water once rain comes to sicker into the ground, it could be a historical turn around! It would mean transforming inquiring into taking a shovel and going out to plant trees. In this way some traces would be left and show to future generations that in 2013 the World Philosophy Congress did take place in Athens.

Hatto Fischer

4.8.2013

Reference:

XXIII World Congress of Philosophy in Athens, 4 - 10 August 2013

Aims:

                                            Source: official website - accessed 24.7.2013

Organizer:

23RD WORLD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
ELTA-UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
15703 ZOGRAFOS, ATHENS, GREECE

Greek website:

http://www.wcp2013.gr/universal/congress-filosofias.html

English website:

http://www.wcp2013.gr/en/universal/congress-filosofias.html

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