GUST to host philosophy conference with 23 int’l scholars
Confab to focus on ‘Unity between East and West’
A flyer of the event
KUWAIT CITY, Feb 7: Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) is set to host a two-day philosophy conference on its campus on the 7th, 8th and 9th of February, organized by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. The conference will bring together over 20 leading figures from the realm of philosophy, such as Prof Elizabeth Susanne Kassab from the Doha institute for Graduate Studies, and Professor Michal J. Sauter, from CIDE in Mexico, under one roof to discuss and deliberate various topics which fall under the conference theme: “The Concept of ‘unity’ between East and West.”
The conference, the first of which to be hosted by GUST, will reflect upon and debate how the idea of “unity” or “totality” has a natural link to smaller related ideas. The conference will also shed light on how starting in the 20th century, these innate links were wholly neglected, even in fields such as biology, which made distinct separations between macro and micro biology. Another modern concept that will be discussed at the conference is “cosmopolitanism”, which references how an
Dr Martha Tryzna
individual citizen lives in accordance with the law of the city as a whole, but the individual also helps creating the whole. Starting this century, scientists have revisited these links, and a new slant is now beginning to form, and this is what the conference aims to shed light on through a series of seminars and panel
A flyer of the events
discussions over the two days.
GUST Associate Professor in the Humanities & Social Sciences Department and Event Organizer, Dr Thorsten BotzBornstein, said, “We have to understand that certain ideas and concepts are fluid, and need to be revisited periodically in order to gain a more thorough and wellrounded understanding of them. By bringing together such notable minds, we continue to realize GUST’s vision of becoming a true knowledge-hub.”
Presenting findings on behalf of GUST will be Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, with his seminar on “The Return of Organic Unity in Contemporary Philosophy”, Dr Mohammed Habib, with his discussion on “Hegel and the Divine Unity in Islam”, Dr Gavin Wilson who will lead a seminar on ”Immediacy and (dis)unity out of the later life of Abduh: The shifting focus of the filmic ECU”, and finally Dr Martha Tryzna, who will discuss “Language as a Tool for Totalitarian Control: A Sociolonguistic Perspetive”.
The philosophy conference at GUST is the second to take place at the university, with the previous one having taken place in 2012, and follows the footsteps of other leading conferences recently hosted by the university, such as the International Federation for Information Processing Conference which assembled approximately 75 scholars from around the globe to present their research findings.