Proceedings from the conference "Living together with ambiguities. Different cultures and common values?"

The Intercultura Foundation has a tradition of biennial conferences with interculturalists, educators and area experts from different disciplines to discuss issues related to cultures and intercultural relations. Beginning in 2008 topics have revolved around the origin of cultural differences, national identities, implications for formal and informal education. Recent ones have dealt with “The Unspoken Sacred” (Bari 2017) and “Neuroscience and Cultures” (Florence 2019).
In these interdisciplinary conferences one of the topics that attracted more interest was the discrepancy between national values as stated in the official documents of any given country (their constitutions, for instance) and the deep values as embodied and practiced every day by the majority of the population.
In the conference “Reconciling Babel” (Milan 2011) many observed that deep cultures – of which people are often unaware – are one of the causes that make co-existence among different groups on the planet more difficult. In fact cultural conflicts are aggravated not by institutional differences between States but by differences between world-views and life-styles of communities.

The Intercultura Foundation took up some of these topics again in this conference, focussing on this main issue: beyond cultural differences are there universal values that may facilitate human co-existence, although they may be embodied in sharply different institutions and behaviours in each culture?

The conference lasted 3 days. Themes were presented and discussed in two-hour, concurrent workshops. Short summaries of discussions were reported in plenary session the next day and are available in the video linked below.

The conference was held in Florence from September 2nd to 4th, 2021.

The volume can be requested by writing to the Foundation.

Speakers:

Sami Aldeeb
Alessandra Algostino
Carlo Altini
Daniele Archibugi
Raja Bahlul
Martyn Barrett
Peter Beyer
Ferruccio Biolcati
Angela Biscaldi
Oliver Scott Curry
Richard Evanoff
Franco Fabbro
Carlo Fusaro
Bianca Gardella Tedeschi
Giuseppe Giordan
Otfried Höffe
Bruno Losito
Enrico Maestri
Eduardo Mendieta
W. John Morgan
Audrey Osler
Gregoris Paschalidis
Giuseppe Ricotta
Roberto Ruffino
Milena Santerini
Kadri Simm
Massimiliano Tarozzi
Marco Verweij
Francesco Viola
Michael Walzer