The Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Complutense University of Madrid has chosen a small municipality in the province of Ávila to celebrate, this weekend, its first Rural Meeting on Philosophy, in which they propose to “rethink the future” from another perspective.
The appointment is from June 30 to July 2 in the Old Town Hall of Cuevas del Valle, a town of just over 500 inhabitants nestled in the Sierra de Gredos, in which there are more residents over 80 years of age than under 15.
One of the coordinators of the meeting, the professor of the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy and vice-dean of Research, Transfer and Institutional Relations, Alba Jiménez, indicates that “the objective is to think philosophically about the category of the rural and take research from the university to unpopulated areas of the Spanish geography”.
Jiménez explains that “usually the idea of ??progress made urban centers models or points of arrival for small towns, but if the model of society we face leads us to think of other models of consumption and social organization such as decrease, are not the towns also a mirror in which the cities must look at themselves?
“It is about thinking about urgent issues of our social reality that concern us all, such as artificial intelligence, freedom, women in the rural world or how technology is transforming the human condition, in a language accessible to everyone” , he argues.
The first Rural Meeting on Philosophy Rethinking Futures aspires to be, according to its organizers, “a space for exchange for Secondary and Baccalaureate students who want to have a first contact with philosophy, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in the problems of contemporary thought”.
Of course, it is also addressed to the inhabitants of the area where it is held and to anyone interested in “delving into the challenges that society faces from fields such as ontology, natural philosophy, anthropology or politics”.
The conference will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, June 30, with a presentation by professors Juan Antonio Valor and Alba Jiménez and researcher Javier Taravilla and, after four discussion tables, will end on Sunday, July 2 at 1:30 p.m. Lecture by Professor Juan José García-Norro on the topic Post-truth, natural law and legal positivism.
Searching for a space like the Sierra de Gredos and Valle del Tiétar as a setting is not by chance, but stems from the idea that rural environments generate a different awareness of time from that experienced in cities.
“They produce other logics and ways of organizing life, which is why they can represent centers of resistance or paradigms from which large cities can radically rethink their institutions and their modes of production of subjectivities and communities”, affirms the organization of the event .
The Rural Meeting of Philosophy is an itinerant project, which intends to travel through the Spanish territory and settle every year in one of its unpopulated areas.
On this occasion, the mayor of the host town, Alberto Martín, has stated that for Cuevas del Valle “it will be a cultural and economic boost on the days of the celebration of this event”, as well as an important promotion by giving visibility the municipality and its environment and customs.
For Martín, “the promotion of these meetings in small towns within the rural world allows and facilitates, above all, older people to be able to have a vision from another perspective and learn about activities outside of their day to day.”
Cuevas del Valle will be the first stop in this project, but the intention of the organizers is that this is “the first edition of many”, so that the congress can travel to other small Spanish towns.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
