Prague, June 9 (CTK) – The Night of Philosophy, an informal meeting between philosophers from several European countries and the broad public, will be held in Prague for the first time from 19:00 to 3:00 on June 16-17, its organisers told reporters yesterday.
They say the event, staged in the National Gallery (NG) and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, is no professional conference, but “a festival of thinking” that will offer debates, film screenings and commented exhibitions, reflecting the main topic of “images, science and politics.”
It will be attended by 55 philosophers from Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia.
“We have decided to overcome the stereotypical picture of philosophers as a kind of ‘beetles’ secluded in gloomy study rooms who communicate only with one another in an incomprehensible language or in expert magazines. We wanted to lure them out and provoke them. Most of them are to present their position in a comprehensible way to a broad public in 15 minutes only,” organiser Ondrej Svec, from the the UK’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, told CTK.
The festival’s topics, which should attract a broad audience, include current ethical and political problems and images that influence the thinking and decision-making of contemporary people as well as looks into the human brain with the aid of electromagnetic resonance, Svec added.
During the night, people can meet, for instance, foreign philosophers Etienne Balibar and Antonio Negri and Czechs Miroslav Petricek, Jiri Priban and Jan Sokol, along with personalities focusing on art.
The event is organised by a group for research into social sciences, comprised of UK, the Czech Science Academy (AV) and the French Institute for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES).
