Tradition, Democracy and Philosophy

The Philosophy Department at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Uludağ University was established in the academic year 1990-1991 and offers undergraduate and graduate programs (both MA and PhD.) The department which achieved an honorable status with its young and dynamic staff among the philosophy departments in Turkey, continues to publish Kaygı, the biannual journal of The Philosophy Department, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Uludağ University. The Philosophy Department has its current position at the end of a 20-years process during which many professors and lecturers contributed to department’s institutionalization. The Department has organized First International Philosophy Congress in 2010 in honor of its 20th year of establishment and Second International Philosophy Congress entitled as “City and Philosophy” during 11-13 October in 2012. The title of the Third International Philosophy Congress is “Tradition, Democracy and Philosophy” and the congress will be held during 23-24-25 October 2014.

The congress is organized to show that when today’s events are considered, philosophy has lost nothing of its up-to-dateness, to prepare a ground for thinking how philosophy’s and philosopher’s attitudes should be towards world problems and to provide a broad scanning on the subjects/concepts of tradition and democracy, the words commonly referred today. Everyday we observe that many things are said about tradition and especially about democracy in television programs, newspapers and speeches of politicians. However, if a term, subject or concept is kept on saying over and over, its content is being emptied. This leads to a threat. When the content of a concept is emptied, it is possible that it’s filled up by anyone at will and by this way crowds get open to the manipulation of each other. Philosophers have the responsibility to prevent the concepts’ contents being emptied. Therefore we felt the responsibility to organize this congress in order to rethink on these concepts, to gain different perspectives and thus to be able to see and to show the role of philosophy in handling the problems and decided to resettle accounts with the concepts of tradition and democracy.