Abstract

Why are we holding UNESCO's Philosophical Encounters and why have we chosen the question “What do we not know?” as the topic of the first one of these meetings? It is in order to respond to these two questions that Judith Schlanger has asked me to write a few lines. She added—for the record. What record, I then thought to myself, if—as I am sending her these pages—nothing has taken place yet? Unless it was the intention, the idea so to speak, that was to be recorded. What seemed to me to be premature, then appeared to come rather late, i.e. to explain, after the event, as if going backwards, the reasons for the creation of the Philosophical Encounters and the choice of their first theme. We know that in the legal profession the summaries of the discussions that precede the adoption of a law allow us to understand its spirit; on this basis, could one not imagine a chronicle of ideas kept by whoever that would illuminate the life of the organization? Perhaps something similar is lacking in the history of an institution like UNESCO. Everything is being preserved in it, as if in a gigantic, impenetrable memory, because it never fell to anyone to preserve the thread of the original intentions. Whatever fate the future may have reserved for UNESCO's Philosophical Encounters, given their experimental nature, I will attempt here to describe the intentions. For whatever purpose if may serve!