Message from the President of FISP
on the occasion of the World Day of Philosophy

Dear fellow philosophers, colleagues, and friends,
As we celebrate another World Day of Philosophy, our world is living through an expanding wave of brutality and violence. 
I would like to suggest the idea that, as lovers of philosophy and scholars, we need to increasingly take on a critical function of securing permanent scholarly exchanges across political boundaries, of building academic networks, and altogether of creating the theoretical and moral conditions for fostering a global sense of community. 
Today more than ever, philosophy needs to build on an increasingly wider set of philosophical concepts. The ability of thinking in terms of a single culture, of one’s own culture, is no longer effective in a world where ideas, languages, habits, and styles circulate across the continents and constantly merge into each other. 
It is time for our philosophical communities to acknowledge cross-cultural inclusiveness as an irreversible orientation in contemporary philosophy; to give proper value and recognition to the philosophical heritage and approaches of a plurality of human civilizations; and to incorporate them within our standard academic assignments. What our world seems to be expecting from us, as philosophers, is to assume our historic challenge of reassessing the sense, scope, and boundaries of philosophy as a distinct and culturally relevant discipline on a global scale. 
Thinking across divides, “across boundaries”, is also a primary goal of the upcoming World Congress of Philosophy, which is now approaching and where we will have a major opportunity to share our diverse ideas on the social, economic, political, technological, and cultural destiny of our common world.

It is therefore by extending a warm invitation to you all, and by looking forward to welcoming you in Rome next year, that I wish you an inspired, creative, and peaceful World Philosophy Day. 

Luca Maria Scarantino
President of Fisp
International Federation of Philosophical Societies