Expanded Reason
Awards

The Francisco de Vitoria University, in collaboration with the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation, announces the sixth edition of the Open Reason Awards, the purpose of which is to recognize and promote university work that serves the truth and aspires to the promotion of man and of the society. The recipients of the awards are university professors and researchers, from any area of ​​knowledge, who have obtained results in the field of research or teaching with scientific papers or academic programs raised from an open reason, as proposed by Benedict XVI. The scientific and intellectual life that runs through the veins of the current university has a dominant note: scientific rationality. This assumes that it is the only safe way to advance in true knowledge and its applications for the good of man and society. And, certainly, a university that prides itself on being one will take care of the scientific rigor of its intellectual work. Anyway there’s something else. If scientific rationality becomes the only form of certain knowledge, vital questions for man are left out: the question of the foundation and meaning of life, the question of the objective value of reality, the problem of God and the meaning of our existence. The university knows this from its beginnings: “The true and intimate origin of the university is in the desire for knowledge, which is proper to man. He wants to know what everything around him is. He wants the truth” (speech by Benedict XVI at La Sapienza University). The Open Reason Awards aim to promote a renewed university thought that maintains and develops sensitivity for the truth that lies in the heart of every human being, so that reason does not succumb to the pressure of interests and the attractiveness of utility as a criterion. last valid. To keep the sensitivity for the truth alive, the whole man must be put back into play, rescuing the underlying existential questions that emerge from his particular tasks and also from all scientific tasks. At the end of the day, science is the response that arises from wonder at reality, hence the confluence between these deeply human questions and scientific work. This award seeks university answers to the questions that arise at the heart of each science and that can only be answered by broadening the horizon of scientific rationality and in a fruitful dialogue with philosophy and theology. It is what we call approach or approach of open reason.