Schiller - Institute, conference 13-14 April 2013

Invitation to a Schiller Institute Conference April 13-14, 2013, near Frankfurt, Germany
“Attaining Freedom through Beauty”The Paradigm for Humanity for a New Era

The world is out of joint. International law seems       
to have been flouted with just as little resistance as
national constitutions have been declared obsolete,
and the rule of law cast aside. Civil and labor rights,
hard-won over centuries, are disappearing down the
abyss, without so much as a whimper. The fact that
a child dies of starvation every five seconds poses no problem for the SUV owners who fill their tanks with biofuel, thereby destroying, even with a single tank,a great quantity of food that could have suffi ced tonourish a child for an entire year.


“Collateral damage” is everywhere, wrought by
drone deployments, drug overdoses, and bailout
packages. A single human life seems to be worth
considerably less than maintaining “lifestyles” and
rates of profi t. Our contemporary paradigm is debased
and abhorrent.
Human civilization is currently threatened with
three existential perils:
1. The acute danger that the policy of regime
change in Southwest Asia – fi rst in Libya and
now against Syria and Iran – has the same explosive
potential today as the Balkans had in the run-up to
World War I. This policy can quickly lead to a thermonuclear
fi restorm, which can result in the annihilation
of human civilization. The combination of
dubious alliances with “rebels” for purposes of regime
change, in tandem with drone warfare against
terrorist groupings, has by no means resulted in the
defeat of al-Qaeda. On the contrary, it has vastly
swelled the ranks of terrorist recruits who are prepared
to throw themselves against the hated West.
Religious extremists of every stripe, rock-hard in belief
in their own uniqueness, are in reality merely
pawns on the “great chessboard” of imperialist manipulations.
A true war-avoidance strategy can only succeed on
the higher level of Reason—on the level of Nicholas
of Cusa‘s Coincidentia oppositorum. The building of
the World Land-Bridge, and thus the true improvement
of living standards for the sake of a better
shared future, can become the impetus for bridging
gaps that today seem unbridgeable. The new name
for peace can only be: development.
2. The banking system of the entire transatlantic
region is hopelessly bankrupt. This systemic crisis
is the outcome of a 50-years-long transformation
of values, away from production based on scientifi c
and technological progress, and into speculation and
maximizing of profi t. The fi nal phase of this process
was ushered in with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall
two-tier banking legislation and complete deregulation
– a process which ends up with the hyperinfl ation
that is now under way.
There is a way out, but only if the casino economy
is halted, and the bankrupt monetarist system
replaced with a credit system which is oriented toward
the general welfare and physical industry,
and which once again places Man at the center of
the economy. Human creativity is not only the sole
source of social wealth, it must also be the engine for
a social order that is fi t for human beings – an order
whose increasing complexity is in harmony with the
laws of the universe.
3. In the transatlantic world, as well as in all
regions of the world that have been touched
by globalization, we are currently experiencing a
cultural catastrophe, as expressed in the exploding
potential for violence, especially among young
people, the bestialization of all interpersonal relations,
the brutalization of morals, the banalization
of the entertainment industry, and cultural decadence.
These phenomena are indeed similar to those
experienced in the fi nal phases of earlier eras. But
the difference today is that the greater perfection of
technical means has vastly increased the damage
infl icted, whereas human beings‘ development has
not progressed at all, but rather has relapsed into
barbarism.
Which makes a renaissance of Classical culture all
the more urgent. Just as with the conquest of earlier
dark ages, such as from the 14th century into the the
Golden Renaissance in Italy, today we must likewise
take up the strands of the fl ourishing phases of previous
cultural epochs, such as ancient Greece, the
Gupta period in India, the Tang and Song dynasties
in China, the Arab renaissance of the Abbasids, the
Italian Renaissance, the École Polytechnique tradition
in France, the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov
in Russia, and the German Classical period, in order
to create, within that tradition, a new future vision
of human development.
This break with the paradigm that has led us into
the present crisis, must be at least as thoroughgoing
as what Nicholas of Cusa brought about with his
I wish to register for the conference:
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I would like to participate on :
Saturday 13.04. 2013 Sunday, 14. 04. 2013
Conference fee: Sat. 30 €, Sun. 20 €
Half price for students
You will receive further information after registration.
Please send by fax, email or post to:
Fax: 0611 - 33483117, E-mail: post@schiller-institut.de, Schiller-Institut,Postfach 5301, 65043 Wiesbaden
Contacts: Ulrike Wolff, Barbara Spahn, Tel.: 0611 - 20 52 065, Mobile: 0177 - 83 92 662
Advance Registration Required
new way of thinking, which characterized the transition
from the the medieval era into our modern era.
Just as Cusa broke with the tenets of scholasticism,
supersitition, and the peripatetics, thereby creating
the preconditions for modern science and Classical
composition, so we today must forswear today‘s dominant
mode of thought.
The belief that all knowledge comes from sense
perception, all variants of nominalism, positivism,
empiricism, and all deductive, inductive, logical, and
linear modes of thought, and all utilitarian, systemsanalysis,
and other mechnistic forms of thinking – all
of these have proved to be bankrupt.
If we want to master humanity‘s existential crisis,
we will have to deliberately usher in the next phase
of human evolution – a phase in which confl icts are
no longer settled through warfare, but rather we
turn to the common aims of mankind. In doing so,
we can learn how to avert the dangers that threaten
us, ranging from the possibility of thermonuclear annihilation,
to a new great extinction caused by the
collision of asteroids or comets, or by processes within
our Solar System for which we currently know no solution.
To accomplish this, not only do we need a revolution
in the sciences, which must be expressed in our
mastery of new technologies on the basis of everincreasing
energy fl ux-density, but it is equally important,
if not even more important, that we bring
about a comprehensive renaissance of Classical culture.
Only when a great part of humanity re-learns
how to think as the great composers of Classical music,
poetry, and the plastic arts have shown us, will
we attain that creative ease and “play-instinct,” as
Friedrich Schiller expressed it, which makes us into
true human beings.
As Schiller wrote in his poem Die Künstler (The Artists),
“It is only through Beauty‘s dawn-gate, that
you enter into the land of Knowledge.” And it is only
through the beauty of Classical culture that we will
rediscover our humanity as a species. The exploration
of space is not only the prerequisite for the survival
of our species and the next step in our evolution;
rather, if we, as “courageous sailors” (Schiller‘s poem
Columbus), push onward to new shores, it will certainly
be for us as it was for Johannes Kepler, namely:
The more knowledge we gain of the lawfulness of the
order of creation, the better we shall grasp the beauty
of these laws, and recognize that this Creator is very
good, and very wise. Or, as Schiller wrote in his Ode
to Joy which Beethoven composed into his Ninth
Symphony:
“Above the starry tabernacle there must
dwell a loving Father.”
A provocation? It is meant to be, in the best sense!
The Schiller Institute‘s conference on April 13-14
will deal with the question: Upon what principles of
science and Classical art must the new paradigm be
built?
***
From Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 10 am
to Sunday April 14, 2013 at 6 pm
Conference language is English,with simultaneous
translation into French, German and Italian.
The conference fee may be paid either
by bank transfer to:
Schiller-Institut, Frankfurter Sparkasse
Account No. 360 635, BLZ: 500 502 01
IBAN DE30 5005 0201 0000 3606 35
SWIFT/BIC: HELADEF1822
Reason for payment: Conference April 2013
or by direct debit:
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BLZ, Bank
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