BACKGROUND |
The first proposal for a European SPES Forum in 2004 was the result of some congruent particular initiatives: |
- The idea to set up a SPES-forum originated in the Centre for economics and ethics of the Catholic University of Leuven/Louvain (Belgium) which in cooperation with the Centre for ethics of the University of Antwerp launched in 1999 a ‘study group for a personalist economy and society’ inspired by the spiritual humanism of philosophers such as Bergson, Maritain, Mounier, Scheler, Levinas and others. This study group became a formal network at the end of 2000 and started its activities under the name of SPES-forum, SPES being an acronym for SPirituality in Economic and Social life.
- Laszlo Zsolnai, director of the Business Ethics Center of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences, organized an international workshop on ‘Spirituality in Management’ in Szeged, July 2001. This was one of the first European conferences to introduce the theme of spirituality in the field of management and business ethics. A selection of the papers of this workshop is recently published: Spirituality and ethics in management (Kluwer, 2004).
- In cooperation with some participants of the Szeged Workshop and with some members of an interuniversity and international ERASMUS project on economics and ethics, the Centre for economics and ethics of Leuven/Louvain submitted in 2002 a proposal to the European Commission, Doctorate-General for Education and Culture (Youth, Civil society, Communication). The proposal intended to start a European SPES-forum, to launch an international conference on ‘spirituality as a public affair ’ and to develop a common research project on best-practice case-studies of spiritually driven entrepreneurship. The proposal was not accepted by the Commission because of ‘insufficient budgetary resources at that moment’.
- Some personalist circles wanted to organize in the autumn of 2005 in Brussels an European conference at the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Mounier ‘s birth (1905-1950). They decided to situate their effort in a broader perspective and first of all, to sustain the creation of a European platform bringing together European personalist circles, some business ethics centres and some new spiritual movements in the shared interest to develop a case for spirituality in business and society and to restart the idea of an European SPES-forum.
- These particular initiatives have to be seen as a response to a more general European challenge. One of the new challenges in Europe is the increasing ‘spiritual poverty’ observed in the European welfare states, which can be seen from the rising indicators of depression, stress, suicide, senseless violence, individualism and mental exhaustion. These phenomena bring the human quest for meaning to the foreground as a question with societal relevance. In contrast with the low spiritual profile of Europe, we are confronted with the up rise of forms of terrorism inspired and justified by religious motives. Tackling the problem of religious fanatism requires more than intellectual arguments. It requires a public concern for democratic expressions of spirituality and inter-religious dialogue. Spirituality in this context must be seen as a public good and not just as a private affair.
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The initiators of the first proposal to set up the European Spes Forum were:
Luk Bouckaert
Prof. em. K.U.Leuven and co-ordinator of the Belgian SPES-forum
Laszlo Zsolnai
Director of the Business Ethics Center, Budapest University of Economic Sciences
Vincent Triest
Président du CAPP, Centre d’Action pour un Personnalisme Pluraliste, Louvain-la-Neuve.
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