Seminar C.L.A..S.I.C.O.S. (in its Spanish acronym): Collective of Reading, Analysis, Systematization and Interpretation of Classics with Social Orientation

Organizers: Concepts and Values Line, IFS-CSIC

Coordinators: Lorenzo Peña and Roberto R. Aramayo.

Synopsis: As a tireless promoter and titanic builder of the great enlightened enterprise that was THE ENCYCLOPEDIA, Denis Diderot emerges, in an era of transition, as an intellectual of the first rank, who combines, with courage and prudence, with audacity but also with balance and weight, the desire to redirect research and collective life according to rational guidelines and attention to the data of experience and the appreciation of what is possible in each historical circumstance. His philosophical thought makes original contributions of great interest on issues of the praxis of human societies, such as natural law and intellectual property, as well as a series of developments in various fields. We can say that the contribution of the Enlightenment to the genesis of contemporary civilization would not have been the same, far from it, without the patient and meticulous work of Denit Diderot, because none of the other encyclopedists had the scope required for this enterprise, which truly deserved the qualification of "cyclopean".

At a time when, after the presumed collapse of Enlightenment reason, the contributions that we believed to be firm from that age of the Enlightenment seem to be tottering, reevaluating Diderot's work in its historical and intellectual context seems to us very convenient for returning to the fortunes of Reason, claiming both the Law of Reason and the Reason of Law, always inspired by the spirit of synthesis and balance of the Encyclopédie and trying to make contributions that, according to this model, serve to merge the imperatives of theory with those of praxis.

Thu, 18/11/2010 - 10:00 - "Codification of human rights?: Human rights in the philosophical-legal culture of our time".

The non-sexist uses of language in the legal field: past, present and future, by Fernando Centenera Sánchez-Seco (University of Alcalá).

Tue, 17/05/2011 - 12:30 - "Law and State: why laws? Diderot and P. Legendre".

By Jean Claude Leveque (IFS, CCHS-CSIC)

Tue, 29/11/2011 - "Diderot's political lucidity or the end of an illusion".

By José Manuel Bermudo (University of Barcelona)