The core group met in Braga, Portugal, between 26-29^th of April 2019. Five of us turned up for the meeting in person (Bruno Nobre, Francois Euvé, Ulf Jonsson, Josef Quitterer, Jacek Poznański) and Georg Gasser from Innsbruck joined us on Skype at Saturday’s evening session.

We were guests of the Jesuit Community of the scholastics (Jesuits in formation) in Braga. We spend two nice days with them, celebrating masses, eating together and discussing philosophical, theological and everyday questions.

Saturday we dedicated to the organizational issues. We started with discussion on our conference which is to take place in Centre Sèvres in Paris, 8^th-9^th of October 2019. The title of the conference is “A Powerful Universe – Levels of Powers. Dispositions and their applications in Science, Metaphysics, and Theology”. It is the final event of the three years of existence of the Science and Religion Cluster of the HEST Programme. We invited for the conference a number of key scholars on powers and dispositions. We will try to enter in dialogue with them on the important issues concerning metaphysics, anthropology, sciences and God.

Read more: The Science and Religion Cluster’s workshop in Braga

 Since the last in-person meeting took place in Brussels in last November, the HEST Ecology cluster has been meeting regularly through webinars to share the developments and last updates of the different projects. The November meeting was followed by two general webinars: one on the 25^th of January and another one on the 20^th of March. Both discussions showed that the group is highly motivated and that the development of the projects is on the right track.

 Moreover, with the purpose of furthering the group’s work on the research project on food waste, a subgroup was created. In this group four different dimensions are being considered: social, theological, philosophical and scientific, and each of them is represented by one member of the group. The last meeting of the subgroup took place the 1^st of February. During this webinar, the group shared their comments and thoughts on a paper written by Edmond Grace, SJ and María Verdugo from JESC on the social aspect of food waste and stressed the importance of looking into the idea of guilt and considering the possibility of incorporating psychology studies to this research. The group discussed the next steps to follow and prepared a short summary in order to present all the information to the general group during the next webinar.

Read more: Updates and latest meetings – HEST Ecology Cluster

Study days and symposia in Krakow, Munich and Namur have been taken up with critical analysis and reflection on how humanity is understood, suggesting some responses to the new forms of reductionism. These events have been preparing the las event of the cluster in Anthropology during this first period of the HEST project (2017-2019).

The Paris symposium on 16-17 May 2019 will be an opportunity to take stock of what has been learnt and discovered in this work, to explore some ways forward in thinking about the changes that have taken place in anthropology, and to take up a critical dialogue with these developments by proposing some new positions of our own.

You are kindly invited to register through this LINK by February 15th.

Read more: Registration for the symposium in Paris on 16-17 May 2019 is now open

THE IDENTITY IN QUESTION: BETWEEN PATHS OF VULNERABILITY AND PATHS OF AUTONOMY.

SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZED AT UNAMUR, 23, 24 AND 25 JANUARY 2019

Humanity is vulnerable: the context of the crisis we are going through, both ecological and societal, is enough to convince us of this. Faced with this observation, a first reaction - as the ethical debates show quite clearly - consists in wanting to fight against this vulnerability, in the name of an autonomy conceived as an affirmation of the individual. Is it, however, the most respectful reaction to man, this being who is at the same time sensitive and rational, solitary and political? Authors (Aristotle, Levinas, Nussbaum and Ricoeur) as well as openings to science (medicine, robotics, computer science), law and the arts (literature, cinema), will help us to uncover this delicate and changing game of the capable and the vulnerable, which constitutes the human being.

Read more: L´identité en question: entre parcours de vulnérabilités et chemins d´autonomie