Pada of Philosophy keynotes hermeneutics conference in Ho Chi Minh

Asst. Prof. Roland Theuas DS Pada, a Philosophy faculty member from the Faculty of Arts and Letters was a keynote speaker in a two-day international conference titled  Hermeneutic Understanding of Classical Philosophies in Contemporary Times  held  at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics III, Da nang City, Vietnam on July 8 and 9, 2015. Organized by the Council for Research in Values ​​and Philosophy (CVRP), together with the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, and the Fujen Academia Catholica, the conference aimed at re-contextualizing classical philosophies in the East and the West by bringing into light contemporary interpretations and applications.

In his keynote lecture entitled The Elements of Freedom in Right: A Contemporary Reading of Hegel Through Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition , Pada took off with re-reading of Hegel's notion of the Sittlichkeit or Ethical Life as a balanced concept of normativity and subjectivity. The key point is the idea drawn from Honneth's recognition theory as a social ontology that describes the formation of consciousness within the social sphere in a progressive development of normative social identity and recognition. With this, Pada argued that while identities are preserved autonomously through freedom, normativity is also respected because it is the founding principle of all social relations. The paper is concluded by pointing out the most recent concept espoused by Honneth's idea of Cooperative Individualism , a principle that is self-regulating, self-criticizing, and self-reproducing, normative practices that value Heteronomy of identities.     

Asst. Prof. Pada delivering his keynote lecture

Asst. Prof. Pada with the participants

Asst. Prof. Pada (3rd from left) with fellow Filipino delegates

The two-day international conference allowed dialogue and discussion between and among scholars who situated the wisdom of classical philosophers in relation to their various cultural traditions in order to deal with the issues and problems beleaguering the 21 st century societies.