The Whole Breadth of Reason. Rethinking Economics and Politics

The financial and economic crisis and the rapid geo-political transformations we are experiencing, including the recent developments in Middle East and north-Africa, urgently call for their broad and realistic understanding.The 2011 ASSET summer School was a small but significant step in re-planning our journey, starting from the very beginning: from re-thinking the notions of human reason, especially economic and political “reason”. The inadequacy of the dominant paradigms – reducing economic reason to rational calculation on one side, and politics to mere realpolitik on the other – is all too evident and has crucial ethical implications. To adopt a realistic attitude when facing economic and political crises requires other than mechanistic and disciplinary approaches.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. Contributors include: Angelo Scola, Alva Noë, David Schmeidler, David J. Storey, Antoine Nasri Messarra, Edward Hadas, Adrian Pabst, Mathias Nebel, and others