October 27-29, 2005
5th Annual International Young Researchers Conference
Thinking in/after Utopia: East-European and Russian Philosophy
Before and After the Collapse of Communism
Featured Keynote Speakers:
Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland, The End of Leninism
and the Future of Liberal Values
Mikhail Epstein, Emory University, The Platonic Drama of Russian
Thought: Ideas against Ideocracy
Catharine Nepomnyashchy, Columbia University, 20th Century Russian
Utopian and Dystopian Fiction as a Mode of Philosophical Discourse
The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies' 2005 Annual International Young Researchers Conference is dedicated to exploring the state of East-European and Russian philosophy today; the role that philosophy played (or didn’t play) in East-Europe and Russia in the process of dismantling of the Communist system; and the effects that the collapse and Communism has had on shaping new configurations/movements of philosophical ideas in these countries.
The conference is conceived of as a forum where young researchers in the field of East-European and Russian studies/philosophy come, from all over the world, and share their views and the outcomes of their research, interact with senior researchers in the field, and with Miami University faculty and students.
For this conference, we were interested in bringing together papers that deal not necessarily with philosophical problems/topics taken in themselves, but especially with the sophisticated, ever-changing interplay that took place in the Communist countries between philosophy and politics, philosophy and ideology, philosophy and social life, philosophy and the other humanities.
- What role did various philosophical practices (teaching, research, philosophically-informed cultural journalism or philosophically-inspired civic movements, etc) play in undermining the Marxist ideology in East-Europe and Russia?
- To what extent the “dissident philosophers” (Patocka, Havel, and others) can be seen as practitioners of the ancient conception of “philosophy as a way of life”?
- How precisely did philosophy (Marxism included) permeate the (societal, intellectual, cultural) life in the Communist regimes?
- What happened with philosophy – and with the net of relationships that it had established with politics, ideology, social life, etc. – when the system collapsed?
- What happens with the life of mind when one school of thought (Marxism) becomes the only accepted school of though?
- What happened with all the Marxist philosophies/philosophers of East-Europe and Russian in the 90’? Where did they all go? What have become of them?
- What are, in general, the sources of the post-communist Russian and East-European philosophy?
This will be an intensive two-day working conference during which each of the selected papers will be critiqued by the other participants and a team of discussants. Final versions of papers will be published in an edited volume.