Stavroula Tsinorema - Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics

Department of Philosophy

University of Crete

From 30 June to 4 July  2025, five students from the Inter-institutional Postgraduate Programme “Bioethics of the University of Crete and I, as lecturer, participated in an five-day Bioethics event on 'Nature and Normativity', set up as a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) within the framework of the ERASMUS project. It took place at the Institute for Practical Philosophy/Ethics of the Catholic Private University Linz, Austria, and was co-organized with the Department of Practical Philosophy–Ethics, Law, Economy of the Department of Philosophy of the FernUniversität in Hagen, the University of Crete (UoC), the University of Zagreb, the University of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridsky”, the Katholische Stiftungshochschule München-University of Applied Sciences, Germany and Aristotle University of Thessalniki.

On the first day, 30^th June, I gave a plenary lecture entitled “The Normative and the Natural. A Critique of Contemporary Naturalisms from  the Standpoint of ‘Reason’s Demand of Unity’”,  followed  by  a plenary seminar on “Normativity, Agency, Nature”. The following day, I conducted face-to face tutorials with students who wished to discuss issues related to my talks but also their own research projects. During the third day, Wednesday 2^nd July,  informal discussions with students continued, whereas the day was nicely rounded up by an educational visit to a historic medieval monastery, St. Florian’s, where, among other things,  we were  given a tour in a historic library with old book editions and manuscripts, some of them of significant philosophical relevance, too. On Thursday,3^rd July, I moderated two students’ sessions with exciting presentations, delivered by students,  followed by Q&A and overall stimulating discussions. On Friday, 4^th July, representatives of the collaborating institutions conducted an in-depth, 2-hour discussion with all students on the achievements of the BIP, sharing their experiences and accepting constructive suggestions about future similar Erasmus activities. The BIP was concluded with a session of the representatives of participating Universities regarding the organisation of a next BIP. It was unanimously decided to be hosted by the University of Crete at Rethymnon, Crete,  on  the theme “The Natural and the Artificial”. 

I, personally, found my participation thoroughly  invigorating, particularly the exchange  of views and experiences with colleagues from six other European Universities. The BIP was an opportunity to  strengthen our already existing collaboration regarding the relation between research and teaching in Bioethics at the MA  and PhD levels. The feedback from European  students of other national curricula was also particularly valuable, with the aim of harmonizing methods and  methodologies in  teaching Bioethics at a European level. Overall, all participants  have found the BIP at Linz immensely fruitful and are keen to continue our  collaboration consistently in the future.