INCLUSIVE RATIONALITY. Rearticulating Philosophy’s Social Role Through a Dialogue Among Dialectic Hegelian Conceptual Tools, Contemporary Metaphilosophy, and Gender Perspectives

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In a global climate of populist policies fuelled by hate speech, gender discrimination, and the defunding of the humanities, InRatio aims to strengthen philosophy’s role within contemporary democratic societies. Its educational impact directly addresses the H2020 programme Societal Challenge of creating more inclusive, innovative and reflective communities. The inquiry starts by laying out three tendencies: 1) the consolidation of three prejudices against philosophy (which also influence national financial policies): its alleged lack of objective knowledge and scientificity, its uselessness, and its abstractness; 2) the social demand for philosophy; and 3) philosophy’s attempt to elaborate an adequate self-image, also considering the gender gap within academic philosophy, and philosophy’s difficulty to convey its results to society. The research aims to transform this situation by turning those prejudices upside down and emphasising philosophy’s contribution to societal challenges. InRatio has three objectives: 1) the elaboration of a metaphilosophical account that (a) redefines the kind of knowledge and scientificity belonging to philosophy, (b) reconsiders philosophy’s impact on education and democratic life; (c) recasts the notion of concreteness in terms of concept networks capable of explanatory power. This will be achieved by building a pluralistic and inclusive account of philosophy’s rationality, which will combine Hegelian tools, contemporary metaphilosophical positions, and perspectives from feminist epistemologies (as a ‘corrective’ measure to question notions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘scientificity’). 2) The ideation of philosophical-educational methods aimed at fostering inclusive and critical thinking. This will foresee training in the Philosophy for Children method and in other educational practices. 3) The implementation of a strategy to improve philosophy’s dialogue with society.