International Congress for Children's Philosophy 2007

"Philosophy - Globalization and Intercultural Understanding".

from October 18 - 21, 2007, in Graz/Austria.

The rapid change of the scientific-technological world, the scientific-technological innovations and breakthroughs correspond to the rapid change of the present ways of life. This leads to considerable difficulties in orientation, especially for children and young people, who thus find themselves in completely new problem situations. These problem situations include above all the relationships between the expanding generations or the complications arising from national and transnational communications and socializations. But also the close areas like school (learning), professional worlds, leisure time are affected. No life-world is exempt from global change.

Philosophy responds to these new challenges of our ever faster changing world with the "search for intercultural understanding in a globalized world". The potential of philosophy for a fruitful promotion of intercultural thinking, decision-making and acting is beyond doubt, but the implementation of the philosophical potential in the learning and living worlds of children still requires enormous efforts for the medium future.

This implementation into the world of children will succeed better if one becomes aware of the network character of "philosophizing with children": Philosophizing with children is a holistic dynamic approach that promotes the personal integration of human existence through cognitive, emotional and social communication.

In its conceptual orientation, the congress "Philosophy - Globalization and Intercultural Understanding" aims to invite distinguished personalities and experts in order to gain new insights both for multicultural orientation and for programmatically functioning pedagogical objectives.

The topics of the congress include the following areas:

• Value transfer and cooperation
• Transculturality and transdisciplinarity
• Intercultural communication and global thinking
• Cognition and Emotion
• Culture and education
• Citizenship and democracy
• Lifelong learning