Information about Olavo de Carvalho - 4

The Philosophy Seminar on
Cidade College of Rio de Janeiro

The Seminar gathers every month
at 9:30 pm in room A-12 of
the City College annex
Av. Epitácio Pessoa, 1664
Ipanema – Rio de Janeiro – RJ
 

What is the Philosophy Seminar?
Leaflet distributed to the readers who join the Philosophy Seminar

You who are now joining the Philosophy Seminar must know the following information:

The Seminar is, in first place, a philosophy course, the only that can help you practice philosophy instead of only repeating what other people, as famous as they may be, have said about it.

But, due to its own nature, philosophy is not a specialized knowledge about a specific class of objects: it is an integral activity of intelligence which involves all fields of knowledge and experience in search of their unity, of their fundament and its ultimate meaning for human consciouness.

There are no limits, therefore, to the specialized knowledge that may become necessary, as auxiliary material, to the learning and exercise of philosophy: philosophical formation is, also and inseparably, the opening of intelligence to the systemic wholeness of human knowledge.

For that reason, the Seminar is also a system of integral education, with room for the following fields of study, besides philosophy strictu sensu:

1. Comparative religion
2. Languages and arts
3. Humanities
4. Sciences of Nature
5. Communication and expression

Such a wide scope makes the Seminar a kind of Generic Introduction to the superior studies in their wholeness.

Yet, that’s not all.

Since philosophy consists, above all, in unity of knowledge in the unity of consciousness, the many fields of knowledge touched in the Seminar do not constitute a disconnected pile of elements, but truly a synthetic vision of the organic unity of human knowledge.

Due to this approach, the Seminar is also theory and practice of interdisciplinary knowledge.

Nevertheless, philosophy can never be a mere professional and academic activity, set apart from the personal intimacy of the one who practices it. It is, by definition, the exercise of self-awareness, which systematically searches for the nexus between knowing, being and acting in the unity of the individual conscience of the philosopher.

The unity of knowing, being and acting is the aim of all philosophy: it is the conquest of wisdom.

In the search for the nexus between knowledge and self-awareness, the philosopher (or, which is exactly the same: the student) is submissive to the discipline of sincerity, which becomes, in a slow, gradual and safe way, a path of spiritual ascension: the development of the personal sense of truth.

Besides, since human intelligence does not develop as more or as less according to the fictional rates of some innate IQ or according to this or that environmental pre-determination, supposedly unbeatable, but according only to the greater or lesser will of each person in the way of searching for the truth and integrating it into the structures of their personality and in the lines of their ways of acting, the Seminar also turns to be a method of development of personal intelligence.

Here is what the Philosophy Seminar is:

1st. A philosophy course.
2nd. A system of integral education.
3rd. A generic introduction to superior studies.
4th. Theory and practice of interdisciplinerity.
5th. A path of spiritual ascension.
6th. A method of developing personal intelligence.

In case these six objectives seems too great to be reached all at the same time, the Seminar itself will show that it is not possible to reach any of them separately: philosophy, integral education, widening of cognitive horizons, unity of knowledge, spiritual ascension founded on self-awareness, and development of human intelligence are, simply, six different names of one thing only.

The Seminar does not promise to give you any of these, because none of them is something you can receive as a gift. It promises only to show you the way to conquer them and make them forever yours.

From you it only demands two things: sincerity and calm effort.

Olavo de Carvalho
 

Students’ Opinions

“A school of life.”
(Edna Tikerpe, psychologist)

“It is everything I had ever dreamed of in terms of education since my adolescence.”
(Ahmed Youssif El-Tassa, doctor)

“Olavo de Carvalho’s Seminar comes, considering the present framework of Brazilian education, not only to fulfil a mere gap, but filling the very space that is attributed to the functions of all education that thinks itself higher.”
(Guilherme Motta, Philosophy graduate, IFICS)

“Learning to think and develop critical reasoning. These were the objectives of the university philosophy course I took. But there, these objectives are not met. To me, that is the great difference between my university course and the Seminar. Only in Olavo de Carvalho’s Seminar I started to put together all the pieces, to comprehend what thinking is. When you discover that, what the ‘thinking that searches for the truth’ is, that becomes our life, it is something we apply to all fields of study. That is education, that is philosophy itself. That is to humanize yourself. And that the Seminar gives us in such a way I had never seen before.”
(Denise Herculano, Philosophy graduate, PUC-Rio)

Translation: Fábio Lins - Proof Reading: Jacqueline Baca