The first Level II Master’s Degree in PHILOSOPHICAL DESIGN is launched: a course in which thought becomes design, intervention and profession; at the University of Verona.

Philosophy has always written and drawn relationships and connections between people, desires and organisations.

This is the first master’s degree in which philosophy is conceived as a profession capable of tuning into the present and addressing its urgent issues. A master’s degree for those who want to bring philosophical thinking into businesses, communication, hospitals, publishing and healthcare settings.

Philosophical design is the art of bringing out hidden, elusive, dormant questions that are nevertheless essential to the lives of people, institutions and organisations. Philosophical design brings together complexities and contradictions, translates them and holds them together.

Contradictory issues – such as those that animate the contemporary world of society and institutions undergoing profound change and dizzying revolution – which, when recognised, become the most important resource for the transformation and innovation of the institution in which one operates.

Let us consider, for example, the world of healthcare, and more specifically that of hospitals, where the relationship between patients, doctors and caregivers increasingly highlights the need for a third party capable of understanding the search for meaning that emerges from experiences of suffering and recognising (rather than dismissing) the impossibility that every healthcare relationship faces.

Or consider the psychoanalytic space, where a philosophical stance can help to give shape to the questions that the subject is asking, preventing them from being reduced to immediate, yet futile, problem solving. Or again, in the world of publishing and cultural planning, where the challenge is to anticipate emerging questions by reading and traversing multiple textual registers, constructing narratives capable of connecting multiple registers of meaning and generating spaces for reflection and dialogue. And again, in philosophical counselling, where the one-to-one relationship serves to explore dilemmas and guide decisions, accompanying complex choices with critical thinking and long-term vision. As well as in the school experience, where philosophy can accompany teachers and students in the co-construction of meanings, through conversational practices and transformative processes.

If, in fact, today our economy is transforming itself into a predominantly symbolic economy in which the value of economic activity is determined not only by material or functional factors but also by their symbolic and cultural significance, only those who know how to handle and connect practices of production and attribution of meaning, shared aesthetic codes and collective narratives that give specific meanings to certain objects or contexts, will be able to add value and bring about profound transformations in the economic process.

For this reason, we have devised a training programme that touches on philosophical counselling, understood as the field capable of designing integrated strategies for the organisation and development of a company’s economic value; philosophy and copywriting, which touches on the common thread that links critical thinking to persuasive communication, transforming complex concepts into effective and engaging narratives capable of reaching a wide and varied audience; an in-depth study of organisational design, which allows philosophical insights to be translated into concrete, innovative and sustainable projects.

The philosophical professionals we train will therefore be privileged interlocutors for those who, in complex and uncertain contexts, must make informed decisions, manage conflicts of meaning, and enhance the symbolic dimension of their work. They will be able to work alongside managers, creatives, therapists, publishers, and cultural curators, helping them to see the margins of innovation and transformation that open up precisely where the demand for meaning becomes most acute and urgent.

Ultimately, this master’s programme aims to consolidate a new figure who not only knows the history and methods of philosophy but also knows how to apply them to design possible futures, create more humane and resilient institutions, and generate authentic value through the encounter between critical thinking, creativity, and strategic pragmatism.

The future of philosophy lies here, in the ability to inhabit the present with tools that combine reason and imagination, theory and practice, the individual and the collective. And in this horizon, every philosophical professional becomes an indispensable bridge between what we are and what we could become.

For more information, visit: PHILOSOPHICAL DESIGN – Philosophy as a profession