Florence | Otium Academy

THE IDEA OF THE WORKSHOP can be expressed using three main theses:

- It is very important to realize and actively shape your worldview. This is the path to maturity and awareness.

- It’s even more important to build your own philosophy, which allows you to understand and realize your personal calling. This is the path to uniqueness and independence.

- But the most important thing is to make your worldview and your own philosophy the basis for making strong decisions and the condition for creating creative forms of life and sustainable practices. This is the path of a meaningful life and creative transformation of reality.

THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THE WORKSHOP:

learn to connect your own worldview and your own philosophy with powerful decisions and forms of life. In other words: we will learn to translate “my worldview” and “my philosophy” into practical reality.

What knowledge and skills will workshop participants acquire?

The ability to connect your worldview and your philosophy with forms of activity and real practices.
Skills for moving from my philosophy to my activities and to the creative forms of my life.
Understanding the role of Florence in the creation of a new Europe.
Formation of holistic thinking skills using the example of answering the question “Why Florence?”
Practical skills in working with the main questions of life, with the theme of the meaning of life.
Knowledge and skills in the field of modern theory and practice of decision making and the implementation of free will.
Understanding the nature of strong decisions and acquiring knowledge about the conditions, motives and goals of developing strong decisions.
Basic knowledge and skills in heuristics and strategizing practice.

Preparation

Participants prepare and present their projects “How I put my own philosophy into practice” at practical classes in Florence.

Lecturer — Andrey Baumeister

Ukrainian philosopher, specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy, ontology, metaphysics, philosophy of law and philosophical textual criticism.

Translator of philosophical texts from Latin, ancient Greek, German and French into Ukrainian.

Doctor of Philosophy (2015), until September 3, 2023, Professor of the Department of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv].

Currently, he is a free philosopher.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM:

First day – Friday

Lecture-workshop “Skills for transition from my worldview and my philosophy to creative forms of life and sustainable practices”

Main topics of the lecture:

From my worldview and my philosophy - to practices and forms of life.
How to connect your worldview and your philosophy with practices?
How to implement your philosophy?
Why is it important to learn to apply your knowledge and skills in practice?
How to learn to apply your knowledge and skills in practice?
The ability to formulate tasks and goals in the process of forming our practices.
Questions about the meaning of life and answer strategies.
Implementing your philosophy in practice is the key to transforming reality. How we become active subjects in a changing world.
Thinking and transformation of reality. How ideas shape a new reality: examples of radical transformations in world history.
Small groups and the formation of reality.
Small groups in the context of the 21st century.
How do we make decisions?
Free will and decision-making. Under what conditions can we talk about free will, about free and meaningful decisions?

Florence (Italian Firenze, Latin Florentia) is an Italian city on the Arno River, in the past it was the center of the Florentine Republic, the capital of the Medici Dukes and the Kingdom of Italy. Nowadays it is the administrative center of the Tuscany region.

The city gave the world such “giants of thought” as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello, Niccolo Machiavelli, Dante and Galileo. The local dialect formed the basis of the literary Italian language; Florentine artists developed the laws of perspective; Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci gave his name to two continents, and Florentine thinkers laid the foundation for the Renaissance, and therefore Florence rightfully bears the name “Cradle of the Renaissance.”

Second day – Saturday

Lecture “Strong decisions, strategic thinking and movement in the space of uncertainty”

What are strong decisions?
Examples of strong solutions.
Thinking and strong decisions.
Theory and practice of heuristics.
Theory and practice of strategizing.

Note: heuristics are a set of methods and approaches that allow you to develop decisions and form optimal practical strategic ones in situations of uncertainty, unpredictability and lack of information.

Participants present their projects. Workshop No. 2

Visit to the Uffizi Museum (Galleria degli Uffizi)

Purpose of visit: a visual representation of the role of art in the formation of the “Florentine miracle”

Participants present their projects. Workshop No. 3

Joint dinner and final discussion of the results of the workshop

The Uffizi Gallery (literally “gallery of offices”) is one of the oldest museums in Europe.

It appeared at one of the most significant moments in history - during the era of the highest dawn of the Florentine Renaissance at the behest of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici. It was created, and this must be remembered, in the city where the then controversial term “museum”, which disappeared for centuries, was once introduced (the ancient Greeks used this word to designate a place dedicated to the Muses). In Florence, in the garden of the Church of St. Mark, a collection of ancient sculptures by Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) was first named this way.

Third day – Sunday

Lecture “Why Florence?”

Florence as a new beginning for Europe. Politics, economics and art (Andrey Baumeister, Evgeniy Golub)

Main topics of the lecture:

Italian republics of the XIV-XV centuries: new forms of life in Europe
The main stages of the formation of Florence in the XIII-XV centuries.
New economics and ideas of republicanism.
These mysterious Medicis.
Italian republics facing the challenges of modern times.
Why is Florence's experience important for the 21st century?

1300 AD

The population of Florence is 90 thousand inhabitants

Bologna - 50 thousand.

Pisa, Siena and Lucca - 40-50 thousand.

Ghent - 50 thousand

London - 40 thousand

Lubeck - 15 thousand.

The income of the city-state of Florence is comparable to that of the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Aragon.

30% of the population is employed in the production of woolen fabrics.

Visit to Palazzo Vecchio

The purpose of visiting Palazzo Vecchio: to visualize the republican idea of Florence and to visualize the connection between ideas, politics, economics and art.

Visit to the Basilica of Santa Croce, the pantheon of the great Florentines

The purpose of visiting the basilica is to visualize the culture of memory and create practical examples for the formation of reality

Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace) - a building on Piazza della Signoria, built in 1299-1314 according to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio

Initially, this government building, where the priors met, was called the New Palace (Palazzo nuovo).

In the 15th century, the rulers of the commune declared themselves signori, and the building itself became known as the Palazzo della Signoria.

After the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I moved here in 1540, the building was renamed Palazzo Ducale (Ducal Palace).

In 1565, the Duke moved his residence to Palazzo Pitti, and this building was henceforth considered Old (Palazzo Vecchio).

Discussion on the topic: “Where are new Florences being born now and how are the conditions created for new breakthroughs”?

Will the near future be a time for the flowering of new forms of the republican idea and new forms of creative life?
What contemporary examples can help us understand strategies for building new forms of social creative life?
New Florence today: Singapore, Dubai, Riyadh, Lisbon, New Delhi?

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