EUVOLIA pilot group has successfully accomplished yet another stage of academic process – Module 3 devoted to axiological constructs of the Enlightenment and Romantic Age.
Led by Oleksandra Nikolova, the students spent several weeks investigating the values systems of European society of the XVII – early XIX centuries reflected in the works by Pierre Corneille, Johann Goethe and Victor Hugo. They focused specifically on such important notions as civic consciousness, social activity, rationalism, nomocracy, gender equality and tolerance. The means of securing gender equality and social protection of people with special needs had caused a heated discussion. Lots of interactive activities were on the way: an open court hearing upon Corneille’s Horatio case, a visualization of Victor Hugo’s Gwynplaine’s alternative destiny in the modern Ukraine and the Devil’s Advocate debates upon Goethe’s Faust: what would he become in the XXI century? Were his quests for the Truth and Social Good worth lives lost?
The direct connections established between the Enlightenment and the modern thinking paradigms helped young philologist and historians rediscover the well-known texts from the strikingly new perspective. The students tried to assess the Ukrainian values system from the European point of view, proposed various ways toward our integration into European community, shared their own experience of facing lack of tolerance and gender equality. Everyone felt involved!