the institute of art and ideas
London
There is little that we can be certain about, but we can be confident that a
time will come when our current beliefs and assumptions are seen as mistaken,
our heroes - like the imperial adventurers of the past - are regarded as
villains, and our morality is viewed as bigoted prejudice. So the IAI seeks to
challenge the notion that our present accepted wisdom is the truth. It aims to
uncover the flaws and limitations in our current thinking in search of
alternative and better ways to hold the world. The IAI was founded in 2008 with
the aim of rescuing philosophy from technical debates about the meaning of words
and returning it to big ideas and putting them at the centre of culture. Not in
aid of a more refined cultural life, but as an urgent call to rethink where we
are. That rethinking is urgent and necessary because the world of ideas is in
crisis. The traditional modernist notion that we are gradually uncovering the
one true account of reality has been undermined by a growing awareness that
ideas are limited by culture, history and language. Yet in a relative world the
paradoxes of postmodern culture has left us lost and confused. We do not know
what to believe, nor do we know how to find the answers. The IAI was founded to
help address this intellectual crisis. Our research and editorial teams have
worked around the clock to face up to this challenge and unearth fresh ways of
thinking that might guide us in an uncertain world. When, with the founding of
the IAI, we declared that philosophy and big ideas should be at the heart of our
culture, we did not do so out of reverence for ideas or an attachment to the
academy and intellectual life. We did so because it is these core thoughts and
ideas that determine the character of our world and our lives. It is our vision
that philosophy and big ideas are not a pleasant reflective addition to our
everyday lives but an essential determinant of who and where we are and of what
is possible. At the IAI we are committed to finding new and better ways to make
sense of the world so that we can navigate a brighter future in an increasingly
dangerous world.
