1. “The power of beauty”: what was the reason behind the choice of the theme for UNIV Forum 2012?

The aim of the UNIV Forum is to invite students to think together about different aspects of the university world, and to encourage fruitful reflection among participants. Rigorous research into the questions arising in each discipline, and their presentation in an academic fashion, is a central aspect of the university world. A key question in this respect is: What are the sources of our knowledge? For more than 2000 years, philosophy has taught us that the starting-point of our knowledge can be found in our sense perception. And from this it is clear that the observation and assessment of things—in their harmony and their coordination, in their beauty—constitutes a cornerstone of university research and teaching.

2. Beauty is one of the strongest motivating factors for the transformation of the world: “Beauty serves to enthuse us in our work, work serves to raise us up”, the Polish writer Cyprian Norwid said. You’ve certainly chosen an ambitious topic for the Forum, don’t you think?

Yes, we’ve proposed a topic that should raise high expectations, but this is something normal for the UNIV Forum. It’s something that constitutes a stimulus for our meeting; and it’s precisely this which moves thousands of students every year to come to Rome. For here you can discover not only the intuitions that you might already have had in your own university, but also the chance to enter into contact with other students from very different countries and cultures, which will enrich and broaden your own outlook. “The transformation of the world”. You might think this a very ambitious aim, but it’s worth asking ourselves: Doesn’t our world need transforming? Is everything going so well that we can simply carry on as we are, with all the deficiencies and problems that come with this sort of “business as usual”? It’s we young people, who have a future full of hope in front of us, who are called to give the world a new direction and to lead it towards goodness, truth, and also beauty.

3. There has always been a close relationship between the search for truth and the university world, but where does beauty fit in here?

The classical European university has always been aware that truth and beauty are two sides of the same coin. It’s not by accident that some of the oldest universities have as their motto: For goodness, truth, and beauty. The tradition of Classical philosophy teaches us that whoever seeks the truth is also seeking beauty. In this way it expresses a profound conviction that’s probably more topical than ever today: to work simply for reasons of efficiency and pragmatism doesn’t satisfy the human mind, because it gives no guarantee that we know things in depth. In particular, it doesn’t satisfy our human nature, because we also want to take pleasure in carrying out work well done—whether it be an experiment, a piece of work, or a work of art—in which we can express our talents and our skills. You might say that beauty expresses the humanizing aspect of university work and, as a result, the true nature of things.

4. Reflection on the language of beauty, on how to communicate beauty full of goodness and truth, seems very topical. What would you say about Benedict XVI’s interest in this theme?

The Holy Father is an exceptional transmitter of beauty: the beauty of the faith itself, and beauty in the way he communicates it. If you listen to his homilies and speeches or read his writings, you can easily see how brilliantly he guides his audience or readership, whether or not they are believers. You can appreciate in a remarkable way how, with him, form and content complement and enrich each other. In this way the “deposit of the faith” becomes more accessible and more attractive, and also more challenging. We all know that Benedict XVI is a great lover of music and art. So his interest in uniting the concepts of goodness, truth and beauty in his magisterium is something very natural. You can see why it was said, shortly after he was elected Pope, that he could be called “the Mozart of theology”.

5. Do you think that university students need to “discover beauty”, that they need a certain “aesthetic education”? What do you think the participants in this year’s Forum can learn in this direction?

I don’t think it’s necessarily a matter of “discovering beauty” in general, but something more complete: it’s understanding that beauty takes in the whole of life. No-one deliberately chooses ugliness. For instance, everyone normally takes care of how they look: they try to find a way of dressing that’s appropriate and elegant; just as we like to take care of our image, for ourselves as well as others; we enjoy a well prepared meal, a successful play or a good concert. But what we could realize better is the fact that beauty isn’t something out of the ordinary, something that’s somehow reserved for special occasions. In this sense an “aesthetic education”, properly understood, can be a help to us. The aesthetic isn’t only closely related to things in themselves, but also to the truth that each thing contains. Its foundations can’t be reduced to a mere tradition or convention, much less to the pure pragmatism of today’s university and professional world. Beauty and aesthetics are at the service of the object itself: they reshape it and shed light on it. And this is simply because they form part if its integrity. To take an example from university life: an academic paper needs to be not just adequate in terms of what is said, but also “beautiful”, in the sense that its external form reflects its content. Its style should leave a mark, arousing the reader’s interest (for the content) and pleasure (for the “beauty” of its way of expressing the content). And each of these dimensions needs the other: style is no use if the content is poor; but equally, good content isn’t enough without the right form.

6. In the words of Pope Paul VI, beauty “unites generations and enables them to communicate in wonder”. Given this reflection and the very international nature of the UNIV Forum, what objectives do you hope to attain during these days? How are you going to make a contribution to the reflection about beauty, and its power of attraction and transformation?

Every year the UNIV Forum brings together thousands of university students from all over the world in Rome. They rub shoulders with participants from many different nationalities and cultures—and with the great crowds of pilgrims who come to Rome for Holy Week. This interchange between different generations and cultures is something very distinctive to UNIV. What we want to achieve in the UNIV Forum is to broaden every participant’s horizons: so that they’re aware of the multiple facets of this year’s theme; so that the things they have certainly experienced and reflected on for themselves, they should be able put in relation with others; so that they go away with an intellectual stimulation that can bear fruit in their own lives, which are now in their full development in the university environment. In this sense, Rome is a very appropriate place, both in theory and in practice, to approach the theme of this year’s Forum. The immense cultural heritage of twenty centuries can help us understand better how past generations faced up to and dealt with the challenges they faced. At the same time, our sharing in the liturgical celebration of Holy Week and Easter is an integral part of UNIV. Through the Liturgy, as the Holy Father frequently reminds us, we’re brought to the Liturgy of heaven, in which we’re united to believers of every culture and every era.