At the beginning of the 20^th century, Henry Bergson said that the man cannot escape his crises without spiritualdevelopment. These words of the French philosopher remain valid.

Indeed, the need for improvement in the quality, being, values and models of life is felted all over the world, but this wish seems most pronounced in Europe, especially in the countries once ruled by totalitarian communist regimes. In this geo-political area, since the fall of the Iron Curtain there has been a great desire for improvement at the social and individual level, but the change has been long delayed. Among other things, is explained by the fact that while good is closely related to truth, the searched for truth has not been rigorously undertaken. The public space is not suffused with a sense that life is grounded in truth. Rather there is passive acceptance of the rupture between the personal truth and public morality, between the individual conscience and laws which are correct only in political terms. Moreover, moral conscience, long buried by cultural factors and deformed by historical and reductive conceptions, remains a matter almost too delicate for discussion.

Hence, this conference invites one to look deeply into the religious and philosophical cultural tradition in search for a more adequate grasp of truth, and its role in private and public life, its relation to social minorities and majorities, the features of a healthy sense of life in this world, the relation between law and morality, between Church and lay State, and the role of education.

The conference will analyze the different ways of understanding truth and the forms of morality it generates: from individual and subjective, unrelated to public life, to a more dynamic, objective, responsible, mature and personalized manner. These and other factors will be discussed during the meeting at Iassy.

Congress Structure:

* In the morning: 3 speakers, each having an hour for presentation and discussions

* In the afternoon: 7 speakers, each having half an hour for presentations and discussions 

Organizer: 

Prof. Pr. Wilhelm Danca (rector@itrc.ro), Rector of the Roman-Catholic Theological Institute of Iassy 

Prof. George F. McLean (mclean@cua.edu), Secretary, The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (www.crvp.org).

Participants:

A group of professors from different countries

10 professors from different university centers (Bucharest, Iassy, Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara) from Romania