After more than a week, eight days to be exact, the 25th World Congress of Philosophy at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy finally ended. The event was attended by more than 5,000 delegates, including philosophers, teachers, researchers, scholars, and students from different countries. The gathering of thinkers started with a program on August 1, 2024 at the Caracalla Baths in the Italian capital. Philosophy scholars and academics from top schools in the Philippines came to present their respective papers on a host of topics dealing with political philosophy, the issue of climate change, logic, structural injustice, and feminism, including Filipino philosophy. Presenters from various countries were distributed around 89 thematic sessions. It was also an opportunity for participants to learn from other cultures and their fellow nationals as well with the beauty and glory of Rome as backdrop. There were daily plenaries and symposia that included the Philosophy of Art, Human embodiment, the Ethics of Living Beings, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Epistemology, Wittgenstein, Kant, Schopenhauer, Logic, Chinese Philosophy, Teaching Philosophy, Philosophy for Children, and Philosophy in the Ancient World, among others. Sapienza University is one of the oldest universities in Europe with a population of 122,000 across disciplines. The next WCP come 2028 will be held in Tokyo, Japan.
Statement of the SES expressing its opposition to the proposal to remove Ethics in the GE Curriculum
We, members of the Board of Directors of the Social Ethics Society, express our strong opposition to the proposal to remove ethics in college. Such move is bereft of merit and is ignorant as to the value and purpose of the teaching of the course, which is thoroughly rooted in the integral and critical function of higher education. The proposal to transfer it to Senior High School deprives college students of the teaching of ethics as a professional course, which is crucial in their civic engagements and the pursuit of a democratic society that can only be grounded in responsible citizenship and critical thinking. The direction of Edcom and its advisers from the technical panels of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) reduces our whole education system into a mode of creating docile workers who will constitute the labor force that will serve the whims and interests of a capital intensive and consumer driven globalized neoliberal economic order. It only breeds our subser...
