An online seminar with John Lachs took place on Saturday, November 18, 2017. John Lachs is an educator and the author of numerous books on American philosophy, especially American pragmatism, on Santayana, and the practical implementation of philosophy into life. This online seminar follows the online seminar about his text “The Quality of Life,” October 5, 2017, during which we discussed the relationship between various aspects of happiness, satisfaction and self-fulfilment in the context of the quality of life and standards of living. The video material from the online seminar we hope to present soon.
In the first part of the seminar, we discussed the problem of relativism. Lachs intends to show some positive aspects of relativism claiming that variety of human engagements, activities, aims, and values make life better; and this is against all the tendencies that would see the world uniform and dogmatized according to one obligatory scheme. In the second part, we discussed education, especially in the context of the technological development of such devices as computers and mobiles. Lachs claims that irrespectively of such developments, the essence of education is a living and creative contact between the teacher and the student, and its main objective is to make people live longer and better lives. The third part was devoted to the role of philosophers; here Lachs refers to the classic standards, according to which philosophers have special social obligations, and one of them is to know better, speak better and act better.
Read more on John Lachs HERE
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