Why an International, Interdisciplinary Summer School on the Whole Breadth of Reason

The aim of the ASSET Summer School 2011 was focussing on human reason in ways that are “sensitive to the truth”, examining the complex links between rationality and freedom, economics and politics, exploring how best to develop and foster reasonable practices in the economy and in politics in a “wider” interdisciplinary perspective. Academics, researchers, professionals, journalists were called to reflect upon the full breadth of human experience, mind and heart, courageously overcoming narrow disciplinary perspectives. The ASSET Summer School was organized as a residential, full time initiative involving academics, postgraduate students, Ph.D. students and Post-Docs; practitioners, policy makers, and entrepreneurs. Morning lectures, held by invited speakers, were followed by debate with discussants and participants; afternoon panels were devoted to the in-depth discussion of morning lectures, presentation and discussion of participants’ papers, selected on the basis of an international Call for Papers. We explicitly aimed at fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue, underlining one particularly suggestive dimension of the notion of reason (in Latin: ratio), namely meaning “relation”.