Introduction to the podcast talks of Fons Elders, emeritus professor at the University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands
The podcast talks are the idea of Paul Scheulderman | Media en Advies | ADE; initiator and producer of the podcast talks in oral and written form.
The University for Humanist Studies was established in 1989, the year of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The Board of the University invited Fons Elders to solicit for the newly established chair: Theory of world views. After his retirement in 2001, briefly after 9/11, he continued his research in the field.
The talks are a work in progress. They are the outcome of dialogues with friends, academic colleagues, artists and kindred minds in search for a better understanding of the world in which we live, and of a world view that listens to our inner convictions. Participants in the project do hope that their efforts to explicitly express their perception might become a source of inspiration to listeners and readers, and a mirror for a clearer comprehension of their world view.
The talks are first of all an exchange of meanings, not of truth, although we do hope to get nearer to the truth [Karl Popper, 1963].
The podcast dialogues derive their inspiration from five well-known data: At birth human beings share one common human nature; 2. This nature is gifted with an innate, unlimited creative consciousness; 3. Since immemorial times, creative imagination leads to a variety of ways of life; 4. Becoming forgetful about (1), leads to ‘blindness’ for the qualities of world views other than one’s own; (2) that ‘blindness’ feeds the tensions that dominate the cultural and political scene in today’s world.
Podcast Part One: the first two dialogues are with Jan Bransen, professor in Philosophy of behavioral sciences at Radboud University, Nijmegen;
the third one with Hans Gerding, emeritus professor in Theosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy at Leiden University, and director of the Parapsychological Institute in Utrecht.
Documents …+ button naar ‘Visions in Nîmes’ for the introduction to the dialogue… nader in te vullen.
Forthcoming: Podcast II with Joost van den Toorn, sculptor. Biography by Anton Anthonissen and Evert Verstraaten, HET MOET GEWOON KLOPPEN,
Joost van den Toorn, pp.168 www.uitgeverijwaanders.nl