First Dialop Research Seminar – three days of Christian Marxist dialogue on projects of transversal Social Ethics
“Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do”: this is the definition, in the pedagogical field, of the sense of tact mentioned in one exposition proposed in the days of the Dialop Research Seminar, held in Vienne from the 20 to the 22 June with 24 participants.
The tact is the ability to act and correct our own behaviour in an unexpected and unpredicted situation where normally people don’t know what to do. We live in a historical time in which we do not really know what to do, faced with a pervasive destructive logic. Our reaction ”with tact”, as Socialists and Christians together is to try to dialogue. At a time when humanity seems to have lost this ability, we are trying to witness that dialogue is possible. Not a dialogue for its own sake. A dialogue through which, starting from different cultural traditions, we try to find common points and common practices of transformation.
Wolfgang Palaver, professor of Catholic Social Thought at the University of Innsbruck, introduced the three-days seminar with a methodological reflection on the challenges of dialogue in belligerent times. The following discussion ended up with the draft for an immediate call to ceasefire, published in this website and sent to media in Austria.
Subsequently the dialogue took shape from the presentations proposed by Christian researchers. After the presentation of each project, a leftist expert offered a replica opening then the discussion with all the participants.
Federico Rovea, Post-doc at Sophia University, and Josef Baum, professor of at the University of Vienna reflected together on the fundamental elements for a social, ecological education. Further in the field of education, Odile Wetzel, master student at Sophia University, and Angelina Giannopoulou, member of Transform! Europe, proposed their reflections starting from the educational case of service learning. Moving on the field of constitutional law, Chiara Galbersanini, post doc at Sophia University, and Walter Baier, former coordinator of Transform! Europe, encouraged participants to discuss the concept of nation and how it leads to questioning the defence of multiculturalism and cultural differences. Raul Buffo, assistant professor at Sophia University and e Jose Manuel Pureza, politician of Left Bloc and professor at university of Coimbra, proposed their reflections in the philosophical-sociological field, on the theme of the paradigm of recognition in transversal social ethics. As activists, Davide Pignata, master student at Sophia University and Katerina Anastasiou, chair of the Communist Party of Austria, discussed the migratory Balkan route.
Last but not least, Peter Jirak and Walter Prügger, of the Augustinum Campus in Graz (Austria), spoke about the challenges and changes that the Catholic educational institution must face for an education that puts the person at the centre. They presented a draft for a renewal of the Catholic School on an institutional, pedagogical and social level, leaning on the guidelines of the Global compact for education Global Compact on Education | Global Compact on Education (educationglobalcompact.org).
The next research seminar will see the researches of students from the Socialist side, replicated by a Christian counterpart. The future of Dialop will be probably shaped in great amount by these researches, which penetrate accurately into matters and are enriched by different perceptions and weltanschauung.
Davide Pignata June 23rd 2022
