Germany kicks off this Thursday its first philosophy festival where the idea is to bring lots of weighty topics out from cosy academe to be discussed in the real world. In the northern city of Hanover, big names will come out of the ivory tower and take part in more than 30 philosophy events for audiences of all ages till Sunday with no entrance charge.
The fest was inspired by the Festival di Filosofia which attracts over 100,000 people annually in Modena, Italy. Julian Nida-Ruemelin, a philosopher who was once the German chancellor's chief adviser on culture and is to open the fest, says modern Germans are strangely uninterested in philosophy compared to the French, Spanish and South Americans.
"In those regions, philosophy is far more a part of public life than it is here," he said, adding that philosophy is anything but an irrelevant scholarly pursuit. Wherever we weigh the ethics of an everyday situation, we conduct a small philosophical inquiry.
"Everybody is a philosopher in a sense, whether you want to be or not," he said. "Even 4-year-old children ask questions about the meaning of life or why we die. But instead of being glad about the stimulating questions, we often slap down their curiosity. "We often deter them from asking again. We say, 'What a silly question' or 'Don't be rude' or 'There isn't any answer.'"
The country which produced such giants of western philosophy as Immanuel Kant or G W F Hegel has largely turned its back on philosophy, as if grand ideas were to blame for two world wars.
"Yet German-language philosophy is so important in the rest of the world that you find a lot of Italians specially learning German just so that they can read works by Martin Heidegger in the original," observes Nida-Ruemeli, who teaches in Munich.
"We neglect this vast intellectual heritage." Peter Nickl, a philosophy lecturer at Hanover University who devised the festival, has chosen popular themes such as football (lecture: physical activity and psychic turmoil) and depression (the ill soul) as well as the classics (Leibniz's concept of mind).
Hanover city council, which is holding the festival in partnership with the university philosophy department, aims to remind locals more in future about one of the city's greatest sons, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).
Oddly, philosopher Leibniz is better known among literate non-Germans than among his own countrymen. Hanover university is formally named Leibniz University after him, but many Germans only associate the name with Leibniz cookies, a brand of petit beurre biscuits.
Top speakers booked for the festival include the Catholic ethicist Robert Spaemann, 81, and Franco Volpi, one of Italy's top contemporary philosophers. We want to overcome prejudices and prove how useful philosophy really is, said Nickl.
Events are planned on a main city square, in cafes, gardens, churches and museums. There will be an art show, concerts and theatre performances as well, and even a gourmet dinner, At Table With the Great Thinkers, in a city restaurant, with a wine-loving emeritus professor, Helmut Pape, speaking on "elation from ideas and wine.
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