Daniel Athanasio aus Brasilien zu Gast in Österreich

The first thing I think is necessary for me to say, not because I must but because it is really true, is that I feel very grateful for this opportunity. I came from a third-world country and being here in the old world, having the opportunity to study and learn with high-level professors in a good institution and experiencing different approaches to the themes in a multicultural and interdisciplinary environment is a privilege for sure.

In the last days of my journey, I was revisiting the application documentation, and I read again my motivation letter. I wrote that we are living in a globalized world with all its dynamics, new challenges and potential crises raised by the modernity changes, therefore to think about the nature and specificities of these changes, how to value and behave in the face of them is the role of the humanities. I still think this is true and highly relevant. In a certain way, I can say that it was possible to exercise this idea during my academic experience at the university. Learning, sharing knowledge, references and points of view in the fields of Philosophy, Bioethics, Theology and Sociology.

Despite that, at the end of my letter, I also wrote that I expected to make new human connections that naturally are formed and bring new meanings to our lives. In addition, I gave myself a little poetic freedom to say that I hoped that it would be the heaviest baggage of the trip - and one which cannot be lost. Before coming here, I already thought this way, that is why I wrote it, not just to impress the evaluators. After all, it got a new meaning for me, because now I have experienced what before were just ideas and dreams. It became tacit knowledge. And I can really say this baggage is heavy and manyfold. However, to summarise, it is about people and experiences. Just like culture itself is.

And here becomes the first question: how to define culture? Is it possible? Different approaches have been presented. For me, I think it is simultaneously something we have – even though it is not possible to strictly define – and something we do – even though this dynamic of action is influenced by the former part, therefore is not totally free as a matter of action. Culture could be thought of as a phenomenon, thus it is something we experience, not just do or have.  It is the dynamic meanings shared by people when they live together and it creates “the context of our being-in-the-world”[1].

Now, coming back to my personal experience I could say I had the opportunity to experience cultural connections both by studying in the university environment and by living in a student dormitory. The first shock was arriving in Austria and starting to live in a different place. Materially – in a new environment and life logistics - but also culturally – a new context. The second shock was the possibility of having contact with people from different cultures from all around the world, with different backgrounds and goals for the future, sharing the same space, creating bounds of sincere friendship and experiencing different ways of being in this world. It brought the opportunity to widen my way of seeing and thinking.

To finish this short essay, I would like again to thank everyone involved in providing me with this experience, including God’s grace. I am grateful for everything that I learned, for the connections that I made, and for the places I got to know.  I am sure that this experience was life changing for me. Just like Heraclitus told once about the impossibility of a man bathing twice in the same river, I feel and know I am not the same that I was. In addition, I hope that I have also somehow affected, influenced or even if just a little bit, changed that river that I had the opportunity to bath for this short but valorous time.

[1] KOCI, Martin. Christianity After Christendom: Heretical Perspectives in Philosophical Theology. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, 11.