New Acropolis: Restoring Long Lost Human Values

With over 10,000 active members worldwide, The New Acropolis is a center for exploring and practicing philosophical education.

We often speak about the ever-faster pace of life in our cities, the lack of contact with nature, the artificiality of our relationships and communications, and the ephemeral and utilitarian goals we set ourselves. Instead of repeating our modern world's problems, I would like to share with you the hope, the love and altruism of a person that inspired my dreams and affected my life in the most profound way. Professor Jorge Angel Livraga Rizzi throughout his life embraced and promoted principles of union inspired by such philosophies as Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism, Theosophy and others, which in their time brought about real progress in civilization.

He believed that the barriers which tend to separate human beings and set them against one another, such as violence, dogmatism, racism and exclusion of all kinds, could cease to have their devastating effects if another way of life was to be promoted – tolerant and educated, firmly based on a solid philosophical education, capable of awakening the latent qualities that lie within every human being.

He founded a nonprofit organization called New Acropolis as an antidote to this state of fact. He was determined that this association should help all of us to raise our consciousness to these problems and to take the opportunity to express our inner self. The present situation confirms, more than ever, there is a pressing need to bring these aims about:

The authentic Human Being. The authentic Human Being is a person who can distinguish between the essential and the non-essential and yet give both its own proper value; a person who can tell the difference between truth and falsehood and has the ability to strike a harmonious balance between inner experience and external life. Philosophy broadens human consciousness, enabling self awareness and the subsequent development of better human relationships.

A renewal of the Human Being. As the authentic Human Being begins to awaken, a new sense of creativity opens up for him. He develops a feeling of self-confidence, inner strength and self-control, which enables him to face up and adapt to the challenges to seize the opportunities of his existence.

A cultural renaissance. So our challenge today is to move away from a conformist culture, which only follows the dictates of fashion, to a more dynamic application of the essential values of philosophy, sciences and arts to work with en eye to the future.

Professor Livraga imagined of a Fraternity among all human beings. A Union beyond differences. Respect for different identities and traditions, combined with the understanding that we are all citizens of the world. An Harmonious coexistence between cultures. He taught us that the practice of tolerance, fostered by a global education and culture, makes it possible to link together all fields of creativity and thought allowing us to see beyond apparent contradictions and find them compatible and complementary. This practice brings new and different people, ideas and feelings into harmony, in a richer and more open social community.

Development of the individual's spiritual capacity. The human being is an integral part of nature but he is unaware of his own potential even though the possibilities for self-development are almost infinite. Men and women should live as part of nature and should express their true personalities, by developing the capacities of each individual. His prime concern was to ensure that this treasure of knowledge was applied in a practical way, proposing philosophy as a way of living accessible to all kinds of people of different mentalities and from various social backgrounds all over the world. In that sense, he used to define his task as the creation of a "survival module," helping to foster a better individual, who in turn could build a better world. All the activities carried out by the New Acropolis international Organization, established byProfessor Livraga in 1957, have a common educational purpose, which is achieved through teaching by setting an example, "the only language which is universally understood ," as Professor Livraga expressed it.

Today, the New Acropolis Cultural Association is present in over forty countries around the world. It's over 10,000 active members and hundreds of thousands of supporters express themselves in more than fifteen languages and come from a wide range of religious denominations, ethnic origins and cultural backgrounds, offering a fine example of fraternal co-existence and mutual understanding.