Público 

dstgroup has decided to offer a Philosophy course to its workers. On the eve of an announced crisis, the company wants to train to win. And the workers are grateful.

Manuel Gavião has been with the dst group for 20 years. He arrived to work as a quality technician in civil construction, but two years later he left the construction site and took up a position in the budget department. To the harshness of daily work, he has always added his love of reading and, particularly, his admiration for Bertrand Russell - "I've read a lot of his books", he tells us. He likes the way he "simplifies thinking" and "how he manages, through philosophy, to better apply scientific knowledge and the use that can be made of it".

In the dst group, everyone is encouraged to read. The construction company with businesses in telecommunications, renewable energies and real estate has a library, is a patron of the Braga Book Fair, sponsors literature awards, supports the Braga Theatre Company, and has a space dedicated to the visual arts, the zet gallery. The exterior of its complex, in Palmeira, Braga, crosses the factory units with sculptures, murals and quotes, and inside there are manuscripts and paintings to appreciate. Group readings and internal conferences are often organised around the social sciences. "There is a kind of social censorship here today for those who don't read", says José Teixeira, chairman of the board of directors, in his office in Palmeira, Braga, where dozens of books and sketches are piled up on his desk and arranged on shelves.

For three decades at the head of the company founded by his father, José Teixeira saw culture as a means of introducing critical thinking within the workers, feeding off the utilitarian principle. "I don't do this because of Kantian duty, of the categorical imperative of doing it just because it's right. I do it because I get a very big result. After all, the worker goes to the psychologist, talks and frees up with peers, and "gets more competitive." Two years ago, he decided to add higher education in philosophy to the company's promotion of literature.

The universe of more than two thousand workers was able to enrol in a post-graduate course, taught by the Catholic University, through which the current of thought from pre-Socratic philosophers to contemporary ones was addressed. To enrol, it was mandatory to have been at the dstgroup for at least two years and to have higher education. 350 employees enrolled and the course guarantees José Teixeira, "went very well". And the "feedback from the employees was so positive" that it would not make sense "to stop there", adds José Machado, Human Resources Manager of the company. That's why, after the last class of the first training course, the dst decided to continue the protocol with the Catholic University for another three years. The first class of "Philosophy for a new century", the name given to the new training session, took place on October 6th.

Ignorance is worse

At 5 p.m., in one of the auditoriums of the company's complex, Pedro McDade, one of the 20 teachers included in the syllabus for the next three years, introduced the class. He begins by introducing himself and immediately poses the question from which the training will be designed: "For those who do not have a Philosophy background, we can start by asking: what is Philosophy?" He explains the etymological definition of the word, the "love of wisdom", or, in a "less poetic way, the critical and rational reflection of everything".

The class, which after 15 minutes already had nearly 350 staff members connected to the screen, is one of contextualisation. It's time for next week's class to really kick off with an introduction to the book The Greatest Good We Can Do, by contemporary Peter Singer. On the one hand, because it is "a book that can be read without any philosophical preparation", and on the other because it is a "utilitarian philosopher", explains Pedro McDade.

José Teixeira's speech is based on the utilitarian perspective when he is questioned about the particularity of the course being given in the middle of working hours, at the end of the working day on a Thursday.

He believes that, in the eyes of others, there may be resistance to the initiative - "They may say: these guys are crazy! So they stop working hours to take philosophy classes? -, but the gains, he guarantees, are immeasurable. "The power and freedom that this set of workers gains by contacting the proof of our ignorance is one of the things that gives me the most pleasure. It's feeling our simple humbleness", says the administrator.

But taking an hour a week away from the company's productivity might even implode in a possible loss of competitiveness? "No, that is a mistake", answers José Teixeira, who saw his company invoice more than 400 million Euros last year. Quoting the famous quote by Victor Hugo in a speech at the French Assembly in 1848, that "ignorance is worse than misery", the businessman regrets that the business world repels the act of training and, when in crisis and "needing to turn around", invariably resorts to dismissal. "But the problem is not with the people," he points out. "It's in management, because the more capacity a worker has, the more productivity he's going to have." And he also stumbles over what he says is a "fallacy" often invoked. "Entrepreneurs have that thing about saying they are sacrificing themselves for creating jobs, as if for every job the entrepreneur doesn't earn the multiple." Consequently, "the more training workers have, the more they are worth".

"Borders are being opened" 

In the second wave of training, almost 600 workers are enrolled. The apparent success of the first two years has led to interested parties queuing up to take part. Hence the two compulsory criteria for enrolment in the first course were abolished. "Suddenly, several workers who didn't comply with the rules put their fingers up... they all got in", José Teixeira reveals. Among those enrolled are people connected to Engineering, Management, Architecture and Law.

Joana Gomes has a degree in Engineering and has been a Quality Manager at dst group for 13 years. Her academic path soon turned her away from Philosophy and, apart from her interest in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, she "never" found reasons to "investigate Philosophy as a subject". Hence the impulse to enrol on the first wave of the course two years ago came naturally. The impact of the "reintroduction to logical thought", he recalls, was not easy, but the study plan was "correct because it gave us a rather holistic view of the evolution of Philosophy, where the great chains of thought come from, and how they evolved throughout modern history".

From the teachings of the classes, she has drawn "an increase in personal wealth" through the emergence of a "capacity to understand subjects that I did not master before". "Now I find myself reading a newspaper article, an opinion piece, and the name of a philosopher and what he stands for are no longer foreign to me. But also in her contact with employees of foreign companies, Philosophy has already brought dividends. "Abroad, there's a slightly retrograde perception that the Portuguese are not cultured. And we here easily dismantle that because we're comfortable having any conversation, we feel we have a background." Even daily, among co-workers, the "cafe conversations become more interesting". Still, on the subject of the inaugural class, the controversial Jordan Peterson was discussed as the "relevance he has, or not, in the current role of communication".

For Manuel, the encounter with the Philosophy course is something new. "Before it was for graduates, and I don't have a degree, but now I've been reselected", he confides. In addition to his interest in Bertrand Russell, he brings with him the "critical thinking" that he sees cultivated in the company's ecosystem. "Here, we promote the increase of knowledge, the opening of the range" and, for those who do the same thing "years on end", this type of initiative "opens borders and breaks down walls in thought". At work, Philosophy "allows me to improve the way I use language" and, in life, "it opens up critical thinking, to change the way I think about various issues and routines in family life", adds Manuel.

In the Philosophy classes, subjects such as ethics, religion, aesthetics or metaphysics will be approached by contemporary authors such as Michel Henry, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Gilles Lipovetsky, John Rawls, Byung-Chul Han and the already mentioned Peter Singer, some of them suggested by José Teixeira himself. The civil engineer says that some of the choices are "polemic”, and this is not by chance. We want to encourage discussion and break down complexes. There are taboo subjects in companies, which do not come out of the wardrobe: homophobia, mental health, sexism, gender identity, religion or politics. Philosophy is, for example, a gateway to discuss religion, otherwise, people are ashamed to say they are Catholic or something else," he says. "One of the capacities that companies must have is to generate thought. And we understand that Philosophy serves as a tool for this", adds José Machado.

At the end of the introduction that precedes the teacher's entrance to the class, José Teixeira bids farewell to the students and staff with the following appeal: "Normally, these issues have resistance from some, but it doesn't matter. What matters is to do the right thing. Good journey to us in this epic."