Description
Thιs travelling seminar explores the relationship and the limits between modern arts and contemporary philosophy, with a particular focus on practical philosophy. Today, the boundaries between art and philosophy are increasingly blurred, while the field of practical philosophy itself becomes less clearly delimited, especially in light of its fundamental relation to artistic practices and its interdisciplinary orientation. The seminar does not approach this relation merely as a matter of artists referring to philosophical ideas or incorporating philosophical references into their work. Rather, its primary concern is to examine how philosophical questioning can be registered within artistic action itself. Conversely, it seeks to reveal the philosophical dimension inherent in artistic processes and creations, as well as to grasp the intrinsic connection between practical philosophy and lived artistic experience. This approach fosters meaningful engagement with academic communities and enhances the societal impact of philosophical and artistic research, in line with the core values and objectives of ERUA. The thematic focus of the seminar opens new research perspectives, particularly within the Arts & Edges thematic area of ERUA. The seminar is conceived as a collaborative and interactive programme that mobilises tools from both philosophy and the arts. Students are encouraged to work with peers in order to explore how philosophy and artistic practice can jointly cultivate critical and creative thinking. They are invited to express themselves by inventing new practices and experiences that articulate philosophical questions through artistic forms and objects. This process requires teamwork, communication skills, cross-cultural collaboration, and active engagement. Given the originality of the seminar’s theme, students will have the opportunity to encounter new ways of thinking and acting, to exchange experiences shaped by different cultural contexts, and to engage in dialogue and collective creation. Through this process, they enrich their academic experience while developing a broader skill set, a global perspective, and a sense of social responsibility. The seminar aims to help students understand how philosophy and the arts can offer forms and pathways through which social concerns may be articulated and addressed, enabling them to reflect critically on how meaning is generated in what they think and do.
Methodology
The seminar adopts a dual methodological framework that combines dialogue as a central philosophical practice with the creation, construction, and invention of artistic objects. This combination constitutes a pedagogical, interactive, and exploratory research approach aimed at identifying, defining, and elaborating philosophical dimensions through lived experience within artistic environments, and vice versa.The methodology also integrates complementary approaches such as problematization, research diaries, scaffolding, bricolage, improvisation, physical theatre practices, and conceptual work. The seminar brings together lectures, workshops, and experimental practices, allowing participants from both universities to interact and collaborate on key themes related to the seminar. Through the convergence of methods drawn from practical philosophy and the arts, students are invited to initiate and organise experiences that open new perspectives on reality and on modes of understanding and acting within it. In this sense, learning is understood not as the acquisition of predefined knowledge, but as a process of situated production, where thinking takes form through practice, experimentation, and shared inquiry.
Assessment / Evaluation Method
Assessment will be based on the material and performative production developed throughout the seminar. Εvaluation will focus on the processes and outcomes of students’ engagement with philosophical inquiry and artistic practice. Students are expected to produce notebooks and performative traces (such as short videos or documented actions), conceived as working tools rather than finalized works. These materials will reflect their sustained involvement with bibliographical study, lectures, workshops, collective discussions, and experimental practices. Evaluation will take into account the quality of engagement, the capacity to translate theoretical input into practice-based exploration, the coherence between research and production, and the ability to reflect critically on the process through which these derivatives emerge. Emphasis will be placed on experimentation, risk-taking, and the articulation of thought through material and performative means, rather than on formal completion or aesthetic resolution.
Supporting the ERUA Vision and Mission
The research interests explored in this seminar can be considered original and innovative. On the one hand, within the framework of ERUA thematic areas, the dynamic relationship between philosophy and the arts remains relatively underexplored, despite its strong potential to open new research perspectives, particularly within the Arts & Edges thematic field. On the other hand, the connection between the arts and practical philosophy is still insufficiently documented, not least because practical philosophy itself, in the twenty-first century, is undergoing a process of reconceptualization. This process entails a rethinking of philosophical practice as an engaged, situated, and challenge-oriented activity. In this context, its encounter with the arts reveals new paths of practical experience, including those emerging within posthuman and ecological perspectives, where human action is understood as embedded within complex social, material, and cultural environments. The interdisciplinary orientation of the seminar thus creates a space for challenge-based learning, in which philosophical and artistic practices jointly address questions arising at the edges of contemporary experience.
The seminar is conceived as a collaborative and interactive programme grounded in co-creation and experiential inquiry, mobilizing the tools of both philosophy and the arts. Students are encouraged to work with peers from different academic and cultural backgrounds, exploring how philosophy and artistic practice together can elaborate and expand critical, reflective, and creative capacities. Rather than transmitting predefined knowledge, the seminar invites participants to invent new practices and experimental formats that articulate philosophical questions through artistic processes. This approach fosters active engagement, teamwork, communication skills, and cross-cultural collaboration, aligning closely with ERUA’s emphasis on participatory and student-centered learning.
Given the originality of the seminar’s theme and methodology, students will have the opportunity to discover new ways of thinking and acting by confronting concrete challenges that resonate with contemporary societal concerns. Through dialogue, collective creation, and experimental practices, they will exchange perspectives shaped by diverse cultural and disciplinary frameworks. This process contributes to the development of a broader skill set, a global outlook, and a heightened sense of responsibility toward society. By foregrounding the societal impact of philosophical and artistic inquiry, the seminar emphasizes how philosophy and the arts can give form to shared concerns, enabling students to reflect critically on local and global issues and to explore how meaning, responsibility, and action can be articulated in response to them.
