Cultivaring the humanities and building citizenship

Abstract

The essay endeavors to show the moral relevance of the formation in humanities in the configuration of democratic citizenship. The starting point of this reflection is a complex conception of citizenship which combines the liberal heritage (associated with the idea of the person as a subject of rights) with the legacy of the practical classic philosophy (the notion of political agency) with the purpose to lay the foundation of the civic compromise with the moral universalism and with the solidary action which underlies in the contemporary culture of Human Rights. The author states that the disposition to exercise an active citizenship requires the culture of a sense of injustice as well as the development of an ethics of compassion to lead us to perceive the other as a real member of our community of interests and purposes. The care of the incarnated reflection brought by literature and human sciences allows the practice of empathy and practical deliberation which contributes precisely to combat exclusion and the forms of violence in the interior of constitutional democracies.