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Science-Art-Philosophy Lab

Estado | Status:

Em curso | In progress 

Opening Remarks for the Philosophical Inter Views Project   (dowload pdf)

Philosophical Inter Views is an internal project of the Science-Art-Philosophy Lab of the Centre for the Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Its main purpose is to interview artists, philosophers and scientists whose work relates to some extent to the production and reproduction of knowledge. The project’s outputs will be a website where some of the interviews will be made online for free in audiovisual format and a special section in the present open access international peer-reviewed journal Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science, published on a four-monthly base. We hope that this section will contain, apart from the interviews, collections of papers on specific topics related either with the idea of a philosophical interview as such, or with issues discussed in the interviews.

Whatever the concept of Philosophy which is at stake, no reasonable person would doubt that Philosophy is deeply engaged with inquiring. In the words of Bertrand Russell:

“Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life” *.

Therefore, the interview as an organon of inquiring promises to be a good philosophical instrument. Despite this, the project does not present a new concept of interview, nor a novelty to the discussion of philosophical theses. This means that the innovative side of this project is the intellectual crossroad it looks for, and not a methodological basis, although it is clear that, to some extent, the very idea of intersection of traditions of thought fosters a methodological tone. Notwithstanding, we recognize the interview as an encounter of two or more human beings in a very specific space of interaction, where knowledge and power are in interplay, where consciousness and logic but also recognition are interwoven. Due to the necessary presence of these relations in between different views, intrinsic to the methodological basis of an interview – which explains the name adopted for this project and the use of a Rubin's vase as a metaphor in our logo –, one of our decisive goals will be to explain the very idea of a philosophical interview, its conditions of possibility, and of existence.

* Russell, B., 1912, The Problems of Philosophy, London, Williams and Norgate/New York, Henry Holt and Company