There are many ways of looking at or evaluating the history of humanity within the history that we call cosmos. Philosophy, traditionally, has searched for ways of correlating the innumerable questions that are related to this history. It can safely be said that every person who prides him or herself on being awake experiences the need for a vision that integrates every important question and answer. Philosophy, as mother of both science and art, is responsible for ensuring that every question and every answer is heard. It strives to create a context where the variety of experience and reflection can converse.
As human beings we thrive on observing and experiencing, that is, on generating phenomena.
Why Integral?
The biological, neurological, psico-social and cultural phenomena, when combined, modify and displace the epistemological grounding of the disciplines that study them separately. This displacement modifies the posture or viewpoint of the observer and the criteria of evaluation and validation of the phenomena. Every observer becomes conscious of the frontiers of his or her world. In other words, we need models that will help us to correlate what we are able to observe while using tools generated by a great variety of disciplines.
Today, faced with increasingly amazing, and sometimes terrifying, discoveries, an authentic philosophy accepts the challenge related to the elaboration of a model sufficiently ample so to embrace the immense number of existing disciplines and sufficiently deep so as to avoid the limitations that accompany every effort at synthesis.
In the IIS all of our programs are rooted in an integral model. Given that these programs and learning experiences are connected to the human person in his or her totality, we have created, incorporating elements of Philosophical Foundations, Positive Psychology, Philosophical Anthropology, Systems Theory and Linguistics, a model that offers an ample and profound base to the interdisciplinary attitude found in all of our learning experiences.
By adding on transcultural studies, the theory of art and literature and the pursuit of excellence in technique and practice, we have created a solid and functional model that includes modern innovative thinkers who propose new and fascinating ways of experiencing interdisciplinarity. Such an integral approach helps to locate and understand the systematic vision of an Aristotle, the assertions of a troubled Descartes, an innovative Bateson, a courageous Jung, a provocative Wittgenstein and the rich, turbulent and hopeful attitude of contemporary transcendental philosophy.
It all converges in a fascinating journey that awakens confidence in the activity of questioning and in the possibility of answers that will enrich us. It all leads to ways of designing and living a better version of our possibility of being.