JENS CAVALLIN Eastern Europe and continental philosophy - a geophilosophical report Södertörn university college Eastern Europe and continental philosophy - a geophilosophical report 1 Introduction 3 The form of the report – an essay 3 The terms 4 Continental 4 “Eastern Europe” 5 Some overriding preliminary observations 7 The religious dimension 11 The Fall of the Wall and the Force of Thought – an idealistic suggestion and a bad conscience 12 2 On the background of institutional changes 14 3. “Continental” currents in the East European philosophical landscapes 16 Belarus 16 The structure 17 Russia 19 Structure 19 The St Petersburg Days of philosophy 2011 20 Inauguration session of the St Petersburg Days of philosophy 23 “Continental philosophy” at the 2011 St Petersburg Days. 24 2012 -2013 St Petersburg Days of philosophy 27 Poland 29 Poland’s philosophical background. The Lwów-Warsaw School and the Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski 29 Continental philosophy in Poland today 32 Philosophical anthropology and political philosophy 33 Continental and Neo-Scholastic philosophy in Poland today 36 Barbara Skarga 38 A mediatic dissenter 40 Twardowski’s heritage 41 Continental philosophy at the IX Congress of Polish philosophy, September 2012 43 Poland as a philosophical territory… 46 4. Some comparative observations 47 5. Conclusions and suggestions 49 Further studies 49 A structure of exchange 49 Research group 51 International conference 51 6. List of persons 52 7. Literature 54 7.1 Surveys 54 7.2 Some selected works 54 7.3 Periodicals 55 Annexes 56 1 List of seminars, sections etc.of St Petersburg Days of philosophy November 17-19, 2011. 56 ANNEX 2 60 IX Polish congress of philosophy September 17-21, 2012 in Wisła 60 Agenda 60 Special symposia 61 Thematic sections 61 ANNEX 3 62 Programme of St Petersburg Days of Philosophy Nov 2012 62 ANNEX 4 62 1 Introduction The remit of the project presented here was formulated as investigating the role of continental philosophy in Eastern European countries. This remit may raise questions, although it is rather clear to people working in academic philosophical research and gives an indication of its subject. Nevertheless a discussion of the terms is justified, and this may also serve a purpose in the presentation of the project. The form of the report – an essay The text submitted here is what is mostly, notably in contemporary French tradition, called an “essai”. Among recent major philosophical texts Sartre’s major work L’Être et le Néant carries this label. But also English philosophical discourse uses the term – for example John Locke in his principal work on Human understanding. The use of the term indicates an ambition of modesty, in respect of the text not complying with rigid constraints of references for background proposals, supporting each mention of a particular author by quotations from specific works etc., but rather allowing for references to commonly accepted understandings of a cited author or school of thought. This may include generalisations and controversial classifications, but also gives leeway for more exploratory and tentative suggestions, pointing towards further investigation and also seeking release from routine ways of reflection. After all, the term means “attempt”, as distinct from a pretention for a completed reflection. An essay aims to stir up a debate, to be part of a continuous exchange of views or controversy, be it a non-scholarly text in a book, an article in the press or literary periodicals. This often implies that the author takes the liberty of trusting that the background of the story is checked and therefore aspires at some degree of confidence from the reader or listener. This report has three main sources. • Material retrieved from the Internet and literature collected in the course of the two years of the project. • Material from two major philosophical congresses, viz. in St Petersburg, November 2011 and in Wisła, Poland, September 2012. • Interviews with philosophers in Poland June 2012. These sources obviously could not more than provide indications of a general picture of the situation in the countries treated. The text, far from aiming at a complete or penetrating account, could, however, hopefully incite to further work and raise curiosity. The report as a whole reflects my own background and research interests, in philosophy, but also in social and political aspects of communication and culture. The terms Continental The customary philosophical classification since some decades, in particular from the point of view of Anglo-American discourse and traditions, takes the distinction of “continental” and “analytical” philosophy as a watershed. The terms may be regarded as superficial and even nonsensical, since, of course, North America is a continent, and the label “continental” mostly refers to philosophical production in Germany and France, and more precisely to some particular tendencies, styles and traditions in those countries. In the context of this report the term may have a particularly doubtful sounding, since it treats areas of the same European continent as Germany and France. Furthermore the same continent saw the birth of many, if not the majority, of the prominent philosophical authors who dominated the philosophical “analytical” scene of North America, and Britain: Carnap, Popper, Neurath, Wittgenstein, Hempel, Feigl, to mention just a few, and their disciples or followers . On the other hand, the French positivist tradition, from Compte over to sociological giants as Durkheim and a natural-scientific oriented tradition in philosophy of a rather specific kind, in for example Bachelard, Cavaillès, Granger and Canguilhem is rather different from what is customarily, in the English-speaking philosophical world, associated to “continental” philosophy. Likewise, the “Austrian” philosophical tradition, from for example Brentano, Meinong, and Twardowski (the father of Polish philosophy!) are often qualified as closer to the English-language philosophy, than the currants today labelled “continental” philosophy. One simple way of avoiding controversies of the “geographical” kind might be by defining the term, enumerating the schools or currents intended to be covered by it. The Södertörn University College web site introduction to the discipline of philosophy, within the research programme on Critical Cultural Theory, uses this approach: “critical theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, genealogy, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, philosophy of language, and postcolonial criticism” are said to be often assembled under the label of “continental philosophy”. Common usage in English-speaking philosophical discourse has developed, so as to take a dichotomy between the two philosophical traditions with its roots in the early 20th C for a reasonably good description of what has been going on in Western philosophy. This demarcation line, manifests itself in the academic scholarly community, for example, in appointments, research funding, trends in peer-reviewed journals, conference themes etc. So there is both a kind of sociological and thematic justification of the term, despite the objections raised from many scholars, such as those represented in the Skarga seminar accounted for below, against it. The objections themselves deserve, as pointed out, a study, since they often disclose philosophical positions, taking sides, favouring persons etc. The relevance of geographical considerations rests upon the circumstance that, in much of philosophical discourse, the notion of philosophy, and the methodology accepted by diverse scholars, institutions and funding agencies, are interrelated by a complex network of relationships, animosities, friendships, which would in many other scholarly fields be regarded as alien to the nucleus of scientific (in a broad sense, wissenschaftliche Arbeit) endeavour. Philosophy is notorious both for its extreme historical dependence, and for its “narcissism”, by which the notion of the field itself is placed at the centre of its attention, and becomes a subject of intense debate, sweeping condemnations or scornful rejection. The substance of the field is again and again reformulated and previous work sometimes wholesale rejected under this or that motivation: “metaphysics”, “Seinsvergessenheit”, “nonsense”, “superficial technical criticism of language (Sprachkritik)” , “naïve attitude”. Frequently geographical references are made, mostly to Greece (e.g. by Nietzsche and Heidegger) but also to Europe (Husserl). Neighbouring disciplines to philosophy, like sociology or psychology, have similar rather vehement discussions, though rarely the field itself constitutes such a central occupation and the term denoting the field is linked to such both solemn and engaged dispute. In philosophy this or that attitude to the field is denounced as invalidating the entire field of research and/or making serious research impossible… (Examples are found in the Swedish Uppsala philosophy, Oxford linguistic philosophy, in authors like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Rorty, Badiou…, Schlick, Carnap,… Husserl?, ). “What is philosophy” is a recurrent title of philosophical books (e.g. Deleuze-Guattari) . The demarcation between the two lines of research examined here is a fragment of this more or less constant, more or less esoteric, debate of philosophy with itself. As will be noted below, this kind of debate was rather lively at least in Poland, and, albeit in a rather much complex manner, in Russia, and, it is likely also in other countries of the region to be studied. “Eastern Europe” Eastern Europe is not an uncontroversial notion: actually the idea that Eastern Europe is a backyard of Western Europe or the “Western World” is presupposed by discourse in both daily expressions, journalism and scholarly patterns of presentation. This applies to not only customary thinking in the “West” but also to much of the self-presentation and self-images in those parts of Europe referred to by the term. This is of course a background to why the notion of “Eastern and Central Europe” tends to be the polite and official denomination of the earlier Soviet-controlled part of Europe. “Central” would thereby connote a more pleasant and important position than “Eastern” it seems, not least in “Occidentalist” discourse. This kind of, admittedly vague and non-corroborated, attitude varies, and is likely to be linked to the political situation of respective countries. The adherence to the European Union “Westernizes” to some extent the state concerned, but the usage of the notion of “Western” both in, for example, Russian and Polish discourse is too obvious and frequent not to be noted. This, linguistic and discursive, property is not just a matter of presentation and depicting, and self-image, but it is, I would argue, also a matter of “deep structure” in the close to Chomskian or Freudian, sense, that is, a structure “underlying” much “surface” formulae, patterns of description and understanding, as well as political, and scholarly, communication. In quasi-psychological terms one might venture to refer to a “complex” underlying much of communicative intercourse. In that respect the notion of “Eastern Europe” may parallel post-colonial controversies and debates, albeit in a complex manner, since “Eastern Europe” was never a direct Western colonial sphere. Actually some of these considerations were rather lively in debates of political philosophy in the inter-war period –authors like Koneczny and the linguist Trubeckoj (working with Roman Jakobson) proposed ideas close to more recent conservative ideologues like Toynbee, or Huntingdon in the post-war period. Such reflections are quite present in the current Russian philosophico-theological-political debates (Gumilyov, “Eurasianism”) and other ambitions of trying to propose national peculiarities in philosophy. They are, in that sense, part of the very rationale behind the present report – that is to investigate features of the interplay between “continental” philosophy in the customary “Western-biased” usage and their role in “Eastern Europe”. But they are also quite notable as part of the substance of what is going on in philosophical work in Russia, in particular, less in Poland and other countries – but this remains to be examined. The background to the heading of this report should also be linked to its mode of financing. When the Swedish system of salaried workers funds (Löntagarfonder) were dismantled by the Centre-Right Government, succeeding the Social Democrats in 1991, the general approach was to transfer the considerable funds collected, to public trust foundations. One of these was the Baltic Foundation, the remit of which was to support research on the region of the Baltic and the earlier Member States of the Council for Mutual Cooperation (SEV in Russian) or the Warsaw Pact, that is, the states dominated by Soviet Union and governed by regimes installed by that state, or in crude terms, “satellite states”. This means that the area of the European part of the earlier Soviet Union, as well as the states from Poland in the North to Bulgaria in the South are covered by the foundation, although not at all many of them are adjacent to the Baltic Sea. Some overriding preliminary observations As indicated above, there is a kind of “post-colonial” dimension to the project. This dimension is also combined with a kind of “anachronistic” consideration, in the following way. History, in the sense of the narrative of the past, has a peculiar capriciousness in “selecting” those events, processes, persons and areas or social structures to be included in “wie es eigentlich gewesen” , as Ranke formulated his ambition. Contemporary approaches to historical theory often include the concept of “negotiation” to describe this kind of selective process in writing or telling what has passed. This includes not only traditional social, political, economic or cultural aspects of history, but notably also scholarly dimensions. In philosophy there is, in the Western tradition, a rather well established canon of presenting schools, persons, authors and currents – canons mostly followed rather rigidly in academic or other studies of philosophy. And since the history of the discipline is a more basic ingredient in philosophy than in other scholarly fields, canons of selection acquire fundamental significance, in comparison to other fields of knowledge. Although the requirement to integrate the history of philosophy in contemporary research is contested by some authors (mostly of an “analytical” shade), there could be no doubt that the history of the subject is more prevalent than in other academic disciplines, including history itself. This chronological aspect of the philosophical discipline is also more liable to be combined with a geographical/spatial parameter. This underlies recurrent reminders of the need to examine “exotic” philosophical spheres (“Oriental”, etc.), but also “minor” achievements, looking from the point of view of the acknowledged “greatness” of a particular author. Language plays a crucial role for selectivity but also more general cultural domination structures. When a particular language has dominated philosophical texts - in the West, Greek, Latin, French, German, English - the geographical dimension is not always noted but is strong. A language may keep a status as “international” or “lingua franca”, long after the dominance of a political entity has disappeared, thus bringing this direct geographical aspect into oblivion. In the present period of time when English is becoming, in the natural and social sciences and in technology, a next to compulsory vehicle of communication in scholarly contexts, the areas and cultural spheres where this language is less mastered, automatically become marginalised. This prevails despite the quantitative relations of speakers – English is, in Europe, a very small vernacular of the population, actually only the third language, after Russian and German, and more or less of the same size as French (60-70 million native speakers). The position of that language is of course a result of the British Empire and its colonies in all parts of the world, notably North America. In the particular case of this study, speakers of the most spoken language of Europe, viz. Russian, have to face this situation. Not only is Russian the mother tongue of at least 160 million people, but it is also the ordinary scholarly means of communication to some additional 50-60 million Ukrainians, Kazachs, Belarusians, Uzbeks, etc., in varying degrees. Polish is another major language in Europe, but, since most Polish academics do not master sufficiently a foreign language to publish in that language, an analogous situation prevails there. For speakers of smaller languages like Bulgarian, Czech, Serbo-Croato-Bosnian, Rumanian, Slovak, Slovenian or Hungarian (just like Swedish…) the situation is paradoxically slightly different, since academic traditions usually incorporate a working knowledge of a major Western language, earlier French or German, nowadays English. This situation should inspire some care and modesty as far as the entire approach of the current report. Still, relativism should not be taken to far – somehow recognition of the “absolute” value of this or that philosophical writer, just as in other scholarly fields, is a presupposition to most serious work. Nevertheless one has to bear in mind the lack of an incontestable fundamentum inconcussum of this absolute value. A case from the history of European philosophy might illustrate this aspect. Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906) was the unrivalled bestseller in philosophy during some decades at the end of the 19th C in Germany, but also read and discussed outside this scholarly and cultural centre of Europe (the World?). Who remembers this very productive and admired philosopher today? Von Hartmann was actually outrivalled by Nietzsche, who rose to immense popularity some time in the middle of his career – and who is the one remembered today. Von Hartmann in a review of Nietzsche actually suggested that he did not add very much to the “nihilistic” philosopher and political activist, Max Stirner whose book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, published in 1845, was an earlier best-seller, and has more or less remained a cult in anarchistic theory. Von Hartmann’s judgement was not entirely misleading, but the philosophical and cultural market, and therefore also history, was taken over by Nietzsche, not von Hartmann. Still he had a considerable influence on, and was admired by, the founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner, whose movement, still, is quite important in many sectors of society and in many countries, though not in philosophy in the academic sense. This geo-historical lesson might today tell us that the immense richness of English-speaking philosophical production in North America and other Anglophone countries, will produce hundreds of “Von Hartmanns”, writing not bad books and articles, etc. but never becoming “great” philosophers. They will be teachers or researchers, making their contributions, sometimes acknowledged by other teachers and researchers, but never giving them a reputation of a “world class”. Trivial as these observations of “dimensions” might seem, they should inspire some tolerance and openness for scholar xxx or “unknown territories” of philosophy, notably when the task is defined as, precisely in this report, examining the reception of a particular tradition, ‘continental’ (not ‘analytic’ or ‘oriental’..) philosophy in a part of our continent. In no way this should be taken as a plea for indifference to the traffic of philosophy (or any other field of knowledge). Rather it may be taken as an invitation not to take systems of status or prestige as excluding high levels of innovative, creative, or just good, thinking in general, in less known geographical or cultural spheres. “Continental” and East European Another geo-philosophical complication in the talk about philosophical communication in Europe is the reverse direction: Nobody who studies French contemporary philosophy can avoid the name of Kojève – (Алекса́ндр Влади́мирович Коже́вников), a Russian who lived for most of his life in Paris and who introduced Hegel to a whole generation of French philosophers in his lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit in the 1930s in Paris. Equally, those interested in “Continental” philosophy, though of a rather less ”idealistic” vein, do not escape the name of the, less widely known, but very significant personality of Alexandre Koyré (Александр Владимирович Койранский), who participated in Husserl’s seminars and later also cooperated with Kojève in the 1930s. Koyré started his academic career on studies in a field close to the religious sphere , but had a significant impact on the studies of history of science; Thomas Kuhn cites Koyré as having influenced his writings on the structure of scientific revolutions. So just as ”analytic” philosophy is highly dependent on philosophers from the European continent, like Carnap, Neurath, Popper, Tarski, etc., ”continental” philosophers are highly indebted to the Eastern part of Europe, for example Russia and Poland. The influx of Russian exiled philosophers, chased away by Lenin in 1922 on the ”philosophical ship”, or who emigrated at about the same time, had also a decisive influence on the trends of thought in Western Europe, notably France. Berdyaev, Šestov, Semyon Frank, all might be said to anticipate ”existentialist” philosophy, together with the influence of the great Russian novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoyevskij, a tradition of philosophy - rejecting the ”scientific” or Enlightened philosophy of much of Western European traditions. Of course trends of ”life philosophy”, from the Romantics to Nietzsche and Bergson do coincide with these tendencies in Eastern Europe. This background to contemporary Western philosophy, whether ”analytic” or ”continental”, should be taken into account, whenever those, rather crude, labels are being used. Streams of thought run in both directions. Another case of “philosophical geography” is Søren Kierkegaard . While Kierkegaard himself followed lectures by Schelling in Berlin and spent some time in the then cultural capital of Europe, his publications (financed, in Danish, by his own funds) were only translated into German about 50 years after his death, viz. in the beginning of the 20th C. Nietzsche only knew about his work from a book in German by the Danish scholar and critic Georg Brandes in 1879, but Kierkegaard’s own texts were translated only after Nietzsche’s illness and death. Kierkegaard’s philosophy, in general regarded as a “predecessor of existentialism”, is, however, strikingly close to the “spirit” of the greatest expressions of Russian thought in literature (Dostoevskij) or, later, in religious-philosophical areas (Šestov, for example), although Kierkegaard’s own works for long were inaccessible to a larger public than the Scandinavian one. Nietzsche is also known for having been greatly impressed by the Russian rather unknown philosopher Afrikan Spir (or Špir, 1837-1890), writing in German, generally classified as a Neo-Kantian whose main work was Thought and Reality. The French philosopher Brunschvicg reedited a work, written by Spir in French in 1877, in 1930 – a period which we have noted was a new start of Russian influence on French, i.e. “continental” thought. Geographically, the Polish Lwów-Warsaw school, emanating from Twardowski, is of course a “continental” tradition, although this tradition is generally regarded as “analytic”. The stream also there goes from East to West, not the opposite way. Alfred Tarski made his doctorate for Twardowski, and Roman Ingarden, the phenomenologist, his habilitation. The religious dimension As often remarked, one observation of a ”dimensional” type is the role which religion seems to play in the philosophical lives of the countries under scrutiny here. Russia in its present period of transformation, and Poland, taking into consideration the role of the Catholic Church in the past in the philosophical structure, both have a closeness to Christian religion in their philosophical structures. Also Jewish philosophy, and traditions, are still to some extent present, albeit more indirectly, since Jewish culture and ethnicity in Eastern Europe has been eradicated, or reduced to the extent that it is difficult to talk about a distinct Jewish culture, at least in comparison to the period before the German crimes in this part of Europe. It is urgent to observe that some features of religious thought still play a role in those parts of Europe, just as religious motivations for philosophy in general have been present in the history of most current thought, just as the reverse influence. Thus Schleiermacher’s launch of a systematic theory of interpretation, designed for Protestant “pure theology” and a scholarly study of the Bible, was at the origin of hermeneutics in philosophy. It also gave rise to the idea of “dogmatic evolution”, of the greatest (sic!) theorist of Protestant “liberal” theology around 1900, Adolf Harnack, also treated by the recently retired Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger). The latter devoted great efforts to analyse how the original (“revealed” and therefore in some sense infallible) Christian messages of the Gospel and other Holy Scriptures could be laid down in dogmatic texts like those of the Credo of Nicea, as well as later dogmas. The task is to explain how a divine message could be transmitted over centuries, translated, understood, and in some sense still valid. The understanding of the role of interpretation, and context, was first devoted to the Christian gospel, by Schleiermacher, and later explored by Dilthey and Gadamer, not to speak of more recent authors like Ricoeur, Derrida, Deleuze or Foucault. It should be, I submit, also a constant challenge to philosophical reflection in “analytic” traditions, where interpretation in the cultural or anthropological sense seldom assume a basic role, although the notion of interpretation is technically present in, for example, philosophical semantics and logical model theory. One main stream of “continental” philosophical thought is thus rooted in the effort to cast a solid foundation for the aspirations of “eternal” messages to be valid, while observing the rigidity of critical scrutiny. But, from an opposite angle, also the “unscientific” trend of Kierkegaard is rooted in a challenge to religious faith, playing a major role also in theologico-philosophical analyses in Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, and Rahner – and other more “existentially” oriented theologians, deeply integrated in philosophical reflections of their time. The Fall of the Wall and the Force of Thought – an idealistic suggestion and a bad conscience Media, and European people, talk of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 as the turning point in European transformation. There is a philosophical point, in our particular context, in disputing this discourse, in viewing the Wall-Fall rather as a happening following a less spectacular, even boring, process of negotiations and meetings. Thereby an analogy could be conceived to the somewhat relativistic point above about “great” thinkers, as distinguished from more “normal” philosophers, as an expression of the whims of philosophical geography. The talk by the Soviet Union Communist party First Secretary Gorbačev in 1986 at a regular summit of Eastern European Communist leaders, leading up to the “Round Table” negotiations and agreement in Poland April 1989 between the Party leaders and the Solidarność trade union leadership, bore no marks of greatness. But still these, immaterial, as it were (far from the knocking down of a concrete wall!) words and meanings were nevertheless the turning points. The philosophical point may be that a great (or just normal) thinker has a prehistory, in conversation, in learning, in reading – although not the role of the person should thereby be ignored. “Eastern Europe” sometimes plays this role of a silent, non-observed, participant in the great spectacular events, as far as cultural production is concerned. In some paraphrased significance, an issue of “facticity” and, indeed, an “emancipation from facticity” might be pertinent to these “socio-philosophical” or “geo-philosophical” considerations. It is a question of how philosophers are to be regarded outside their “factual” contexts; that is, corporeal, social, or cultural in the more narrow sense, focussing on the customs and discourses, ways of thinking and expression, in short of their being-in-the-world. The “regard” of other milieus, powerful or even hegemonic collectives is a factor in itself, of “factual” nature. So is also the indirect “regard” related to the other, surrounding, or influential, “regards”. This manifests itself in the self-esteem, or lack of self-esteem by a desire to be integrated into other cultures. Even, employing a pseudo-psychoanalytic lingo, an “inferiority complex” in an attitude of being underdog, less advanced or “primitive”. This was an impression rather frequently, though seldom openly demonstrated, in the implementation of the project presented here. It is often a factor also in small philosophical milieus like the Scandinavian one where cultural, political or linguistic circumstances differ from the ex-Soviet bloc. It is undeniable that the history of production of Western philosophical thoughts or texts, with some rare exceptions, (Kierkegaard) is scarce in small languages. After the first steps in Greece the academic and extra-muros production of scholarly texts has been in the dominant learned language, Greek, Latin, French, German or English. The fact that Russian is the most wide-spread vernacular in Europe, and also that Polish, with its tradition of using Latin in both clerical and secular contexts for centuries, is also in the top section of a the world’s most used mother-tongues is a reminder of the hegemonic character of cultural production in the philosophical field… The remit of the project reported here, again, still takes for granted, not at all without justification!, and similarly to other scholarly disciplines, that some philosophers, some philosophical achievements, traditions and milieus are more established, deeper, and simply more advanced than others – and that therefore looking into the reception of “Continental” philosophy in the post-Soviet area is worthwhile. This may be valid as well, looking from the point of view of cultural communication of cultural transmissions, violent or peaceful, be it in areas ranging from fashion, languages, entertainment over to scholarly products or religion. Projects in cultural studies, ethnographic theory or methodological discussions in anthropology tend to be accompanied by a sense of bad conscience, underlying an approach of tolerance. The presupposition of such disciplines is mostly that the “Other” deserves another approach of study than “ourselves”. As in other meta-scientific contexts, the provisional way out is taken to be aware of this gap of approach, of these presuppositions, as far as possible. This is never absolutely possible, as Foucault taught us. The bad conscience may be embarrassing, but may also serve a good purpose, by challenging facile categorisations and evidences - just as confessions preceded by repentance of sins are considered to be useful and healthy for the soul…. 2 On the background of institutional changes Philosophy was in the Soviet-dominated countries an important subject, as part of the ideological education of the population, in all stages and all parts of society. In that sense philosophy played a much greater role in social structure than in other parts of the world. Philosophy and the official doctrine permeating education in all parts of the schooling system, including the universities, was based on ritual reference to the writings of Marx-Engels and Lenin, that is, a parallel to religious education in schools of the Christian, and still, Moslem world. Theoretical aspects were, just as in Christian traditions, Protestant and Catholic, supplemented by ethical and civic education at earlier stages of schools and pre-schools. Those kinds of indoctrination and ethical training, could rightfully be compared to the suffocating domination of Christian religion in the Western traditions in the old European monarchies or in the colonies established in the Americas, although many prefer to forget about it. Marx-Engels was public or state philosophy, the reading of their texts compulsory and subject to examination at universities. In particular, social sciences and the humanities were completely stamped by this tradition, albeit mostly in a ritual and rather mechanic manner, not engaging either students or teachers personally. Despite this schematic and arid character of the philosophical elements in the public educational system, it also included basic philosophical education in areas like logic (Russia has a great mathematical tradition since hundreds of years!), epistemology, history of philosophy etc. In this way some philosophical basic “Bildung” persisted throughout the persecutions and cleansing of deviant “idealist” tendencies. Doctrines and teaching formulated in ritual Marxist language dominated also research theses and publications, subject to censorship by the state or public monopoly editing houses. Reverences or at least references to Marx-Engels were necessary for an academic career, also at such a relatively uniquely independent academic institution in the Soviet-dominated sphere as the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, KUL, cf. below).. More “neutral” parts of philosophy, such as mathematical logic (Kolmogorov, Moscow), semiotic analyses, for example of various parts of cultural production (the Tartu school with Jurij Lotman) , and psychology (Vygotskij) had more leeway and could present results with lasting merit. Academic exchange, whether of journals, books or persons was hampered economic and political restrictions and by difficulties for travelling abroad, often insurmountable for scholars in the Soviet-dominated countries. Also the influx of scholars from other countries was scarce, more so in politically sensible disciplines as philosophy and the social sciences. Philosophy was, and is still today in many institutions – for example at the Warsaw university and the Polish Academy of Sciences - part of departments including the social sciences. In this way Marx’s old dictum that the task of philosophy should be to change the world might still have some imprint on the institutional framework. When democratic rule was accepted in the Eastern European states dominated by the Soviet Union, the Union itself dissolved, the independence of its former republics granted, and Russia itself entered a road of democratic reform, profound change took place in all fields of society. The new freedom had a negative counterpoint in a break-down of the public welfare system which undoubtedly was part of the preceding, albeit dictatorial and corrupt, regime. Economic changes rather drastically changed social structure, in Russia and some of the other ex-Soviet republics by the take-over of public monopolies by “oligarchs” and the establishment of a kind of “savage capitalism”. In Poland “shock therapy” was not as violent as in Russia. On the level of cultural production, changes were also dramatic: freedom of speech, of the media and the arts, freedom to travel in and out of the country (save for visa restrictions…) revolutionised intellectual and artistic conditions. Though higher education was part of the sweeping changes in terms of the new freedoms acquired the institutional framework was for a large part more or less preserved. Size, position and work of the philosophical institutions were less drastically changed, save for the German systematic dismissal of most East German professors of philosophy. The academic world could gradually adapt to pre-war systems of promotion, publication and teaching and more universally accepted academic routines. The Eastern bloc states had more or less preserved or introduced rather traditional university structures, with recruitment systems, promotions, academic degrees, examinations etc. not too different from other European states, of course without academic independence. The strong position of the academies of science was one rather strong difference from many states of Europe, as well as in the Americas, but, for example, the French system of research includes a strong centralised research council (CNRS), by and large a parallel to the Soviet system of Academy of Science. 3. “Continental” currents in the East European philosophical landscapes The project was launched to fill in gaps and supply an overview of the post-Soviet region, but the report presented here includes only material from three countries, one of which is far less covered, viz. Belarus. Still this country presents some interesting aspects since Soviet-like structures have been more preserved there than in other countries of Eastern Europe. Historical traditions and geographical position will play a different role in a closer study of countries like Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia with their affiliation to the ancient Habsburg, German-speaking, cultural sphere. Romania entertains a certain affiliation to French culture, Bulgaria and Serbia were closer to Russia. Belarus Economic structures today are difficult to see through, since the control of the economic activities are in the hands of Lukašenko or his circle, and it is hard to distinguish state structures from more privately controlled property, often in the hands of the ruling group around Lukašenko. The lack of political pluralism and sometimes brutal oppression is also a fundamental factor for academic life. Yet the difference in political freedom, or movement might sometimes be less important as compared to Russia and the Ukraine, not to speak of other ex-Soviet republics. Political murders and disappearances occur both in Russia and the Ukraine, and corruption and power concentration is more or less omnipresent. Opposition media do exist in Belarus, generally its citizens could travel freely abroad, and scholarly exchange – also in the philosophical field - is encouraged. Belarus was something of a showpiece in the Soviet Union, with higher standards of living and more “Western” appearances than some of the other parts of the USSR. Historically, the territory of contemporary Belarus was part of the multinational Polish-Lithuanian union or “republic of the gentry”, until its destruction 1772-95. The languages of that union were Polish, “Ruthenian” – and Latin, long used in the Parliament, and several denominations were co-existing: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Uniate Byzantines, Protestantism, Judaism. The structure The philosophical situation in Belarus might be summarized as follows: The only university institution with philosophy on its programme, after the closure of the private European Humanities university, is the State university of Minsk (BSU). Some sensitive subjects are exiled, notably to the Vilnius European Humanities University centre for Belarus, a revival of a private university closed down by Lukashenko in 2004. Still it seems to be possible also for scholars in Belarus to travel to that centre without any particular obstructions, and cooperate with it. Its alumni do not seem to have any difficulties of employment in their home-country. Apart from that the Academy of Sciences has a rather strong department of philosophy and social sciences. Although this is the only scholarly structure, the other institutions of higher education in the country also have compulsory philosophy courses (90 hours) for all students, thus retaining some of the Soviet tradition also in this respect. That means that both technical, pedagogical and commercial institutions have philosophy in their programmes of study. At the BSU there are two chairs of philosophy, one for philosophy and science, the other for cultural philosophy. There is also a chair for social communication with considerable philosophical content . The “pure” philosophy approach is thus still not implemented in the institutional structure. The most relevant part of BSU, from a “continental” point of view, is the chair of cultural philosophy, where there is a programme of the ”Belarusian philosophical space” . www.prastora.org (in Belarusian with an English version, ) , by and large a general site for philosophy, including national and foreign higher education connections (among those the Vilnius European Humanitarian University) some events and projects. At this site one finds information (in Belarusian) on the philosophical work in Belarus, including information on persons working in the field in the country. The initiator of the space, Pavel Barkouskij, is also the editor-in-chief of the journal “Topos” (http://topos.ehu.lt/en/journal/) published by the EHU. He teaches at the chair of cultural philosophy in the State University of Minsk, and commutes between the two institutions. The journal receives contributions in English, French, Russian and Belarusian, but the primary language seems to be Russian. The EHU provides only PhD programmes in philosophy, and specializes in philosophical anthropology, with the journal Topos as a centre of publications. Well-known Western scholars in the “continental” tradition, viz. Bernhard Waldenfels and John Sallis are members of the editorial board of the journal. One of the collaborators at the Belarusian philosophy space site submitted a PhD thesis, in Russian, on a ”continental” subject: ”Phenomenon and Understanding”, later published as a monograph - theses are not published in general in Belarus. The author also gives courses at BSU in ancient philosophy and hermeneutics, for example. Another collaborator at the BSU department has worked with a series Visual and Cultural Studies, of the European Humanities University in Vilnius, on the background of scholarly work in the theory and philosophy of communication. As mentioned, the Academy of Science also has a department of philosophy. The persons employed there have research and administrative tasks, but the remuneration is so low that other occupations are required for a living. The Academy has 30-40 employed in philosophy. By and large philosophical publications are in Russian, although some translations of classical texts are presented in Belarusian. Russian also dominates teaching. The only major research event in “Continental” philosophy in later years seems to have been an international seminar on Jan Patočka in 2011 :Jan Patočka and the Idea of Europe: East-Central European Contexts, Minsk, Belarus, April 20-23, 2011. A conference proceedings volume is foreseen. The, relatively scarce, information obtained indicates that “Continental” currents of philosophy are gaining some ground, but are, as a whole not very dominant. Instead the old generation of philosophers, who obtained their posts, both at the universities and at the Academy of Science, still dominate, mostly as a rather passive and not very creative group of scholars. Marxist terminology is seldom used for labelling views and philosophical currents, although a large share of the older generation of office-holders would still have had to profess their loyalty to that kind of ritual philosophy. This circle seems still to form an influential part of the group of people who have an influence on a public governmental level as fas as appointing new professors and Academy members. All in all, a general picture of stagnation shines through the rather modest information gathered, although one might dare the guess that, if any trend is upcoming, it would rather be an approach to “continental” philosophy. The closeness to the Baltic republics would also speak in favour of this development. The philosophical milieu of Belarus is rather limited, but some clear needs of additional competence were presented in conversations, such as qualified teaching in ancient philosophy. Also guest lectures of well-known personalities (Žižek was mentioned) in the international arena would be welcomed - but often economic resources are lacking. Of course cooperation through the Baltic foundation would be appreciated, both by way of the EHU and the BSU structures. Russia Structure Russia is Europe’s (and the world’s) largest country, and Russian is by far the first language of the largest number of people in Europe, as well as the common scholarly language of both the Ukraine and Belarus, just as in some of the Central Asian former Soviet republics, although English is gaining ground in the Baltic republics and to some modest extent also in other republics. Emigration of Russian minorities from the Central Asian republics has been considerable, or in some countries complete, after domestic unrests. The Russian public philosophical infrastructure has remained rather unchanged since the Soviet times. Philosophical institutes exist in most universities, with large numbers of students and teachers. The Russian Academy of Science also, just as in Belarus and Poland, continues to uphold a considerable number of posts in the philosophical field. It is still a huge organisation with thousands of employees and scholars. Its main activity is within the natural and social sciences. The academy has about 55 000 employees, and 500 persons are full members of the Academy. Its philosophical institute employs 217 persons full-time. The institute has a rather comprehensive catalogue of its activities and provides information on the Internet (http://iph.ras.ru). Some idea of what kind of currents the researchers of the Academy are involved in is given by the list of publications by the Academy. Only one publication demonstrates a clear “Continental” tendency. The largest universities, in Moscow and St Petersburg, have large philosophical faculties, and also some smaller universities, such as the private European university in St Petersburg and the Humanitarian university in Moscow also include considerable numbers of posts in the philosophical area – usually in common departments with the social sciences. Two major congresses of philosophy are held regularly: the St Petersburg days of philosophy (annually) and the All-Russian congress of philosophy, the latest one (VI) in Nižnij Novgorod in 2012. The agendas, talks and papers of these occasions provided some general overview of the diverse currents of thought in Russian philosophy, and therefore also facilitated a method of scanning what is described above as “Continental” trends. Some glimpses of such events are described below from the St Petersburg Days of philosophy in November 2011. On the other hand, the headings announced for the VI All-Russian Congress in June 2012 did not give many indications associating to a Continental philosophical tradition, although the scope of subjects treated, the number of presentations, and papers, were very large. The St Petersburg Days of philosophy 2011 The St Petersburg Days of philosophy represent a wide diversity of subjects, depending on the theme of the conference, but more or less give an open space to all philosophical trends in the country. The 2011 conference, in which I participated, was broader in its range of topics than the 2012 occasion. The organisation of the event followed the traditional kind of scholarly conferences, although matters like volumes of abstracts, lists of participants etc. were not prepared, as in most similar events. But the agenda and diverse sections and presentations of the lectures given were transparent and made it possible for a visitor to choose those parts of the conference which were more likely to attach to the project remit. A general feature of the entire event was the language: practically all presentations were in Russian, thus providing the impression of an authentic living Russian philosophical language. The theme of the 2011 St Petersburg Days of Philosophy had an axiological bent: Worlds of values for the contemporary humankind. The outline of content of the sections and the various fields of research were presented in the programme overview several months before the conference itself. By and large the conference gave an overview of on-going tendencies in Russian philosophical research. An assessment of the quality of interventions, and therefore also the standard of scholarly achievements must however be rather prudent, both because of the rather radically divergent views on the level of Russian philosophy today expressed by some authors in the philosophical circles of the country, and the modest level of data underlying this report. The most negative view would qualify much of the Russian philosophical structure as simply stagnation, where posts were still held by the old generation of professors from the old regime and the scholarly production of little value. Much of this generation have even been qualified as non-professional “charlatans” by the most outspoken critics. The staff of higher education and research institutions does contain fully qualified scholars, though, according to this critical view, they are rather few. In the St Petersburg universities a joint social science and philosophy department is the institutional structure, and only in Moscow - both the State university and the Academy – there are independent philosophical departments. An explicit, clear, interest in Continental philosophy is primarily associated to the Moscow Russian State Humanity University (RGGU), rather than to the general Moscow State university. This “Gumanitarnyj universitet”, a successor of earlier institutes of the study of archaeology and other related subjects, is also the seat of the group which has launched a revival of the journal Logos, entirely devoted, from the fall of the Soviet system, to phenomenology and other “continental” trends. The dean of its philosophical faculty is also (2013) the president of the Russian philosophical society (Valerij Gubin). He has written on both phenomenology and Nietzsche and introduced philosophical anthropology. So clearly this is the centre of what might be seen as a systematic connection to “Continental philosophy” in the sense referred to above. The St Petersburg Days of philosophy in 2011 actually closed by a presentation of this new launch of the journal, and a seminar with lengthy discussions on the subjects to be included in forthcoming issues of the journal demonstrating its links to “Continental” philosophy. A perhaps superficial, but still significant, testimony of some of the general divisions in Russian philosophical life was the position of one of the scholars of the European (private, post-graduate) university, who described the major part of the intervention headlines at the St Petersburg Days, as unprofessional, or “unphilosophical”. The testimony in itself expresses the position that the major part of the activities in Russian philosophical life are below standards, indeed standards imported from other parts of international philosophical life. The same more or less total rejection of Russian philosophy as a whole could be found in the work referred to below on “who does philosophy in Russia” (by A.I. Piatigorskij) The programme in itself of the St Petersburg Days, did not actually support this very negative attitude, although some ingredients in the progremme were below the standards of what might be expected. Neither did my attendance at some of the announced, more “Continental”-sounding, seminars corroborate a sweepingly negative judgement. Some examples below might instead show openings for collaboration and a continued and more systematic communication with Russian philosophical institutions, mostly in the largest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg, but no preconceived positions should exclude contacts with institutions also in the province. Of course seminars and sessions visited during one week could not give a very complete picture of Russian philosophy today, but combined with the headings of the All-Russian philosophy conference in Nižnij Novgorod, June 2012, a general impression is provided – naturally supplemented by the overviews given by publications in and outside the Web. On this superficial level, in contrast to the very negative assessment referred to above, headings and subjects do not very much differ from similar occasions in other countries, although, as noted, staff changes have been rather slow as from the Soviet era. This has naturally consequences, as far as dynamics and developments of new milieus of research, an “academism” in a negative sense of conserving discourses and structures, and the rather modest level of publications. On the other hand: some of the very top-ranking philosophers of the Western world also aligned clearly to political power centres – first of them of course Heidegger. In Germany, after the fall of the Nazi regime, the political system in the Western zones did not exclude permanently such personalities, with some rare exceptions. The Soviet East Germany zone and later German Democratic Republic however the changes were drastic: the Nazi-loyal philosophers fled to the Western part and after 1990 the fall of the GDR regime brought about a nearly complete purge of the party/regime-appointed philosophers. This is a striking contrast, and might be considered rather problematic in comparison to the relatively mild treatment of Nazi-loyal State officials in the West. The Polish and Russian post-Communist regimes did not at all follow this German pattern, leaving academic philosophers to keep their posts, for good or bad. A very ambitious survey of Russian philosophy, both historical and current trends, authors and references equally is provided by the Dictionnaire de la philosophie russe, recently published in French, as a revised translation of a Russian encyclopedia. Reference is given in the Bibliography. A general overview of what is going on in Russian philosophy today is given in an ambitious collection of essays – the first volume of which (2007) is available in digital form on the Web under the title “Who does philosophy today in Russia? “ The titles of this first volume undoubtedly indicate that a substantial part of the essays included would qualify for the label of, at least, “non-analytic” philosophy, and, if a dichotomy is applied, therefore also fall within the type of currents observed here. Of course, as noted above, much of “non-analytic” philosophy is rather rooted in Russian traditions, often close to the religious and aesthetic spheres than to phenomenology, hermeneutics, German Idealism, French “Post-modernism” or other “continental” currents. The table of contents with a translation of the titles is annexed to this report. A look into the shelves of philosophy of the Academy bookshop in St Petersburg also gave an indication of what might be qualified as an interest in “continental” philosophy: for example the works of Gustav Špet have been reedited – Špet was one of the editors of the Russian translation of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, and spent some time in Göttingen with Husserl. Russian was actually the first language into which that work was translated, in 1909. Also a Russian edition of Nietzsche’s work is under publication. Inauguration session of the St Petersburg Days of philosophy The introduction to the Petersburg Days immediately struck a theme that was to a great extent different from the “ordinary” trends of Continental philosophy - the presence of Orthodox priests and some of the themes at the opening ceremony did actually mark a rather divergent tone from most of Western philosophy. German and French philosophy are in basic respects both secular and secularist, but this opening ceremony, just as Russian philosophy, both the trends of the first after-Revolutionary years, the revived movements after the fall of the Soviet state, and the traditions exiled to Western Europe, not least on the “philosophers’ ship”, (less to the USA) have in many cases a fundamental link to Christian religion, just as many of the most renowned Russian philosophers who managed to establish themselves in Western Europe. Philosophers like Losev, Solovyov, Berdyayev, Frank, Špet (who died in a concentration camp) all share this link to Christian religion. This should be taken into account in a situation where the Russian Orthodox church actually has regained much of its previous position in Russian society, in close association with the public secular power. Another theme of this opening ceremony, also recurrent in some of the sessions of the following days, was the frequent reference to Russian national spirit and values – the theme of the Days included the term Values and thereby may have incited this rhetoric - and a vocation for the Russian culture to embody a divergent kind of spirituality than the Western traditions. The particularity of Russia, Russian thought, and Russian values was emphasized too often to be neglected. Another part of this approach was the emphasis of “Eurasian” aspect of Russian values, as mediators between East and West. Criticism in this spirit was launched against Eurocentrism in philosophy and its accompaniment of modernity (by Chrenov, theorist of art). Condemnations both of “marketism philosophy”, post-modernism, scientism were expressed, in the same vein. These kinds of expressions, again, complicate the distinction underlying this report – since “modernity” together with “Eurocentrism” may be taken as imbued in both “Continental” and “analytic” philosophical production, though opposing voices (e.g. Heidegger) may also be contained therein. Husserl’s late work on the Crisis of philosophy may be taken as a testimony of a Eurocentric approach, but also analytic philosophy is mostly associated to “modernism”, Neo-positivism, but also its predecessors in Bertrand Russell, and indeed French philosophical and sociological positivism etc. The prize awarded, at the end of the opening ceremony, for the best philosophical publication of the year, might inspire some support for the negative judgements referred to above – the title of the work to which the prize was awarded was “The Metaphysics of Celebrations and Feasts” … xxxxx “Continental philosophy” at the 2011 St Petersburg Days. The seminars or sessions, which I had the occasion to attend, did offer a multitude of themes and aspects, but the sessions clearly associating to “continental” subjects were rather few. On the other hand, the other part of the philosophical field, viz. analytic philosophy, had still fewer sessions, according to the programme headings. With one exception - a seminar in French and Russian - all the sessions which I attended were exclusively in Russian, so anyone who aspires to acquaint herself with the Russian philosophical life has to know, or at least understand, the language. The bilingual seminar took place within the framework of an international conference on “The Other”, being part of the Days, and was introduced by the French clinical psychoanalyst Serge Lesourd,. His theme was about the “calculating” and calculable human being, and generally he touched upon themes close to religious reflection, where he even managed to include reference to the Christian doctrine of Trinity. Two other interventions at the same sessions also touched religious themes, one about Schelling’s concept of God, linked to the subject of prayer, and analysing the concept of God in German idealism in general (Kryglov), another talk was about the “metaphorical notion of God” (Černoglazov ) , basically being an analysis of Parmigianino’s painting of the conversion of St Paul. He associated to Lacan’s notion of “objet a” as the hidden (metaphorical) Other. Aleksander Lyžov discussed Jacoby’s concept of the Other as “face” – in Russian “face” and “person” is the same word (litsó). The lecture hall was full, perhaps a testimony of the interest religious aspects of philosophy seem to arouse. Only one objection came from the audience, from a gentleman who in some manner seemed to represent “the old tradition” of a “materialist” kind – though in the form of cognitive science. Another seminar of the same tendency was part of a series of seminars and research devoted to the philosopher Rožanov (1856 -1919), a thinker little known outside Russia (the respective length of Wikipedia articles in the Russian vs. English versions are rather illustrative in this respect) but very important in Russian culture and thought. Rožanov seems to have been inspired by Swedenborg, and was a very controversial person in his lifetime. His emphasis on sex, and tolerance as to homosexuality, was particularly shocking in his time. He was a clear advocate of the link between philosophy and religion, but refused to integrate into a particular confession. The relationships between national, religious and literary values was a recurrent theme, apart from during the inauguration session also for a seminar on “Values and a realist world-view”, mostly devoted to great Russian literary figures, such as Bulgakov, Pasternak, Blok, Achmatova etc. The son of Achmatova, Gumilyov (Junior - his father was shot during the revolution for his royalist inclinations) played, in the 1990s, a kind of focal role for the national-religious trend in Russian thought. The seminar concentrated on the comparison between Russian and “European” culture - viewed as some kind of dialectical phenomenon… Another, clearly “continental” seminar – part of a series of seminars at the St Petersburg faculty - dealt with Scheler and the anthropology of personality. A selection of Scheler texts had just been published in Russian, the leader of the seminar (Doroseev) had also published a book about Scheler, and, furthermore, an anthology with texts on Scheler had also just come out. There is a Russian Scheler society, and a journal, where articles both in Russian and English are accepted. One of the themes of the seminar was the dependence of morality on religion, another intervention treated the relationship between Scheler’s “material theory of value” and Kant’s theory of value. The interventions at the seminar were solid and there might be reason for further contacts. One section of media philosophy, which might be of interest to interdisciplinary studies of communication, media and philosophy, was conducted by Marat Zamirovič. One of the papers (by Štajn) dealt with the “desubjectivization” function of “avatars” (that is, basic figures in “Second Life” – an Internet game). In this context it is worthwhile recollecting the Russian scholarly tradition of film analysis (Jurij Lotman in Tartu has been mentioned) . Another paper in the seminar treated McLuhan, linking to Baudrillard’s notion of “simulacrum”. A seminar on Nietzsche was led by Sadovnikov, who actually gave a long lecture. He discussed Nietzsche’s discussion of Russia as a model for a centralised state – contrasting to the German, just united but very decentralised, Reich. He pointed to the ambiguity of the German term “Macht”, giving two Russian options for translation: either “mošč” – having to do with capacity to act, and “vlast’”, which refers to ruling, endowing perhaps an interesting ambiguity also to Nietzsche’s expression “Wille zur Macht”. The final seminar of the Days was devoted to the re-launch of the journal “Logos”, a bi-monthly, devoted entirely to “continental” currents of philosophy: phenomenology, hermeneutics, German and French thought etc. , . The journal is financed by a foundation close to the liberal politician Gajdar, and the editing board is in Moscow (mostly the Gumanitarnyj universitet). Klaus Held is on the consulting scholarly board. Some of the editing staff work abroad (Lausanne, Maiatskij, and Bochum, Plotnikov ). About 20 philosophers participated in the discussion, and the assistant editor in chief ( Čubarov) and the secretary of the journal Natalia Artyošenko. The plans for forthcoming issues were discussed. Among the themes were: • Kittler and post-secular philosophy • Radicalism in a philosophical sense • The role of Carl Schmitt • The City • The philosophy of economics • Media philosophy • The brain • The “scarce” (“redkost’”) • Communism • Oskar Becker • Pragmatism and phenomenology In 2010 a very comprehensive issue treated phenomenology in general. Among the subjects was the issue of psychologism, a subject to which I have myself devoted attention. Artyošenko outlined a programme of drawing a map on phenomenological-hermeneutical research in Russia. Such a programme would of course very much simplify further contacts with Russian “continental” philosophy. The journal is, in itself, a focal point for any attempt to contact and cooperate with Russian philosophy of that kind. One proposal was launched from the floor (Vlassov, cf. below) to join a weblog to the journal, so as to reach also non-academic circles. ‘’ During the seminar I took the opportunity of presenting the project for which I was attending the conference, as well as suggestions for further contacts with Södertörn University College. From the Internet it is not quite clear how much of the plans sketched at the seminar have been implemented. At the time of writing (autumn – winter 2013-14), it seems that Logos is published irregularly, 6 issues in 2012 but so far two issues in 2013 – the last issue (No 2(92) 2013), is devoted to “Speculative realism”. Contacts with the editors have so far been without result. A new journal “Horizon”, published twice a year, explicitly devoted to phenomenological studies, was launched in 2012 by the State University in St Petersburg and its recently founded Centre for phenomenological research and hermeneutics. Three volumes are available in PDF-form 2012-1 and 2, and 2013-1. Its texts are predominantly in Russian, but also a text in English is to be found in Volume no 1 from 2012 (February) . Obviously this centre and the journal merit the attention of any researcher interested in the “continental” philosophy in Russia. 2012 -2013 St Petersburg Days of philosophy I did not attend the 2012 and 2013 conferences, but the preceding reflections on the ”religious dimension” acquire additional weight, since the entire theme of the 2012 days was precisely ”Religion in the time of science”. The programme of that conference is available on the Web. http://philosophy.spbu.ru/4071/7726 Also in 2013 Days were organized, this time on the subject of The philosophy of knowledge and creative life. Its programme is found on http://philosophy.spbu.ru/4071 Poland Poland’s philosophical background. The Lwów-Warsaw School and the Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Poland is more “Western”, in the sense of part of the Roman Catholic sphere - although the larger part of the Polish Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), viz. Lithuania was the last country of Europe to adopt Christian faith - and in the sense of sharing more cultural traditions and exchanges with Western and Northern Europe. This is also frequently emphasized by Polish nationalists, thereby underscoring its difference from the “East” of Europe. Poland’s territory was, until the partitions 1772-1795 by the surrounding empires of Russia, Austria and Prussia, quite different from today, covering much of what is today Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, and the Ukraine. . The same applied to interwar Poland, where nearly half of the population had a non-Polish ethnicity. In this sense Poland was rather similar to the Russian (Soviet) empires, and only after the violent transformations of its territory, cleansing of the German population of the Western parts (Silesia, Prussia and Pomerania), and extermination of the Jewish minority, Poland has a relatively uniform ethnicity. Polish history is one of culturally diverse traditions, where numerous languages and religious denominations constituted a base for a relatively tolerant and pluralistic community, uncommon in Europe. The “republic of the nobility”, where nobles of all ranks were eligible to the Diet (Sejm), added to this pluralism, rather deviant from the usual European pattern of tyrannical monarchies. Philosophically speaking Poland was since the Middle Ages part of exchanges the Western parts of Europe. It was more or less intertwined, also before the partitions, with German university sphere – Königsberg once was Polish territory - although the Polish university structure was far smaller than the rather extensive German network. Still the Cracow Jagiellonian university was one of the oldest in Europe, about the same age as Prague and had both philosophical study courses and some remarkable thinkers. Philosophy did exist at universities of the Prussian, Russian and Austrian partitions, but was not taught in Polish. Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938), who was appointed professor at the university in the capital of the then Austrian province of Galicia, Lemberg (Lwów, Lvov, Lviv) in 1895 is regarded as the father of Polish modern philosophy He established a philosophical curriculum, gave lectures in most philosophical disciplines and carefully designed study programmes etc. Twardowski’s influence can hardly be overestimated: the “Lwów-Warsaw school“ dominated the inter-war period and included pioneering logicians as Łukasiewicz, Leśniewski and Tarski. But also phenomenologists came from the circle of Twardowski. His disciples and colleagues were soon occupying most professorial chairs in the newly independent Poland, from 1918. Twardowski’s own philosophy might be considered as “proto-phenomenological” but his school is generally classified as “analytic”, although some of his disciples were far from the ideological attitudes of logical positivism and followers in the analytic traditions. Twardowski knew Husserl and they had in common their most influential teacher Franz Brentano, and also disciples (Ingarden and Leo Blaustein). Twardowski’s own teaching, though in Polish, could be viewed as part of the German university sphere, with text-books mostly in German. Twardowski himself was born and educated in Vienna, and bilingual. Though Twardowski might be regarded as one of the founders of “Continental” philosophy his general style was more of the Brentanian, rather rigid, concise and analysing character than the descriptive style of Husserl and later phenomenologists. In that sense, again, the term, as well as the influence of Continental philosophy is anachronistic. During Soviet domination, the “People’s Republic of Poland”, some emigration also took place from Poland, but the radical purge of traditional philosophy (even killing or shipping out “idealist” philosophers) that took place in Russia never happened in Poland. State-sponsored Marxist philosophy was favoured at universities, and some professors were fired – for example Ingarden. Reverence had to be given to Marx and Marxism in university courses, but all professors did not have to be confessing Marxists. ….The Lwów-Warsaw school could continue most of its activities, now turning to a more outspoken “analytic” tendency, sometimes combined with elements of “materialist” thought. One of the foreground figures of Twardowski’s disciples Kotarbiński even enjoyed a rather privileged status. And there were also some classical orthodox Marxists, who were performing serious philosophical work. The best known of these, Adam Schaff (1913-2006), started his education at Twardowski’s university in Lwów (Lviv), and entered the Communist party already in 1932. He escaped to Russia (Moscow) when the German troops entered the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, continued his studies in Moscow, and returned with the Soviet troops to liberated Poland. He formed part of the regime’s inner-most circle, as a member of the Central committee and teacher at Party schools, until the Anti-Semitic outbreak in 1968, and produced scholarly works in philosophy, in a Marxist tradition, also in German or French. One such intervention was a paper on Sartre, whose close relationship to Marxism is well known – which might be said to constitute one kind of dialogue on “continental” philosophy . Though controversial in much of public opinion after 1989 he upheld his philosophical positions and took part in political debates, as an advocate of “Eurocommunism”. His career, political role but also scholarly work might deserve a study. It is inevitable to cast a special look, when talking about Polish philosophy in the Soviet-dominated part of Europe, at the Catholic University of Lublin (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, KUL). This university was founded already immediately after the First World War in 1918 – incidentally by one of the heads of the liquidated St Petersburg Academy of studies in theology. It was, as all Polish intellectual institutions, closed during the German terror, many teachers and students were murdered by the Germans, some by the Russians. After liberation, it was actually the first Polish university starting its activities, already in the autumn 1944. The university was even in the first years developing and could continue its work all through the entire Communist era. Some of the surviving scholars from the Polish universities in Wilno (today Vilnius) and from Lwów – annexed by the Soviet Union in agreement with the Western powers in Yalta and Potsdam – joined the KUL. The university retained a rather strong position despite State repression. Philosophy was a respected and sought for subject of study and research, beside its function of training the Catholic clergy. The Neo-Thomist tradition had from the outset a strong grip on the philosophy department, a tradition which is still dominant, although other traditions, such as phenomenology, also came into research and teaching. Also some of the closed departments in other faculties (physics, etc.) could survive, under cover of specialized subjects in philosophy. Ingarden’s best known disciple was Karol Wojtyła, later pope John Paul II, who for long taught at KUL. Although Neo-Scholastic philosophy is “continental” in a geographical sense, it could not unambiguously be incorporated into the scope of this project, but as contributing to the climate of reception of continental non-Marxist currents it was probably rather important indirectly. Marxism, as a “continental” current also offered some openings, in the study of the history of philosophy curricula for the introduction of German idealism, phenomenology, French structuralism, and to a limited degree, Western varieties of studies of the Early Marx, for example those conducted by people like Adam Schaff. It is no wonder that Poland had less resistance than for example Scandinavian philosophical departments to continental philosophy, despite the fact that the surviving inter-war Polish analytic leading representatives of the Lwów-Warsaw school, such as Ajdukiewicz, Czeżowski, Kotarbiński, dominated the scene and continued their academic careers during the Polish People’s Republic. Kotarbiński’s essay”Treatise on a Good Work” was constantly re-edited, and his “reism” considered to be close to dialectical materialism, although reism was a metaphysical position taken over from Franz Brentano, two generations earlier, and had little to do with materialism in the customary, and still less Marxian, sense. Some philosophers, for example Kołakowski and the leading scholar and historian of the Lwów-Warsaw school today, Jan Woleński, were active members of the Communist party. Analytical philosophy was in some respects closer than other currents to the Neo-Thomist movement; the well-known historian of philosophy, Dominican priest I M Bocheński, (teaching in Fribourg, Switzerland) represented this kind of relationship, just as some of the professors of KUL (Stępień, for example, see below tries to combine analytical, Neo-Scholastic and phenomenological elements in his epistemology). Continental philosophy in Poland today In order to capture some features of what is termed Continental philosophy in Poland today the approach has been rather “phenomenological”, in the concrete sense of being based on a number of interviews and meetings with Polish philosophers, and with impressions from the 9th Polish national congress of philosophy in Wisła, South Poland, September 2012. A more elaborated overview naturally presupposes knowledge of main publications, both periodical and books etc. One input was the background sketched above, and notably that Poland has a more continuous acquaintance with phenomenology, a heritage from Ingarden, and also a society of phenomenology, which promotes that approach to philosophy in a general sense. The preceding president of the society was Andrzej Gwiazdowski, working at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Państwowa Akademia Nauk, PAN) in Warsaw, viz. its department of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Philosophical anthropology and political philosophy Plessner A token of the position of phenomenology in academic life might be the seminar on philosophical anthropology, under the auspices of the PAN in Warsaw, devoted to the work of Helmuth Plessner, June 2012 which I could partially attend. Gwiazdowski was one of the organizers of this seminar, entirely held in German and including scholars from Poland, Russia and Germany, as well as one from the US. Plessner’s thoughts seem to have met rather lively interest in Poland – perhaps mainly through the work of Karol Sauerland, a German-Polish social theorist and philosopher, emeritus from Warsaw university Plessner is not prima facie the primary celebrity of Continental philosophy, but his approaches, as documented in a number of studies presented at the seminar, are related to themes in contemporary Continental philosophy. Thereby the Plessner seminar in Warsaw also served as an entry into the Polish circles of interest in Continental philosophy. One example of the subjects treated at the seminar was Plessner’s attempts to sketch a philosophy of biology, as a kind of “materialist” alternative to Kantian and Husserlian transcendental idealism. This approach was also, as a pioneering effort, linked to discussions on animal rights and capacities. His criticism of “social radicalism” might also be relevant, notably in a Post-Soviet context, for a discourse in political philosophy. Plessner’s work on the “limits to community” has been translated into Polish and comes into the political-philosophical discussion, sketched below, on the role of “communism”, concrete in the ex-Soviet sphere, but also a recent theme brought up by Agamben, Žižek, Rancière, Badiou and other contemporary thinkers of a “post-modern” brand. The participation of Polish philosophers in the seminar also included several persons playing an important role precisely for Continental trends at Warsaw University and the Academy of Science. In the latter institution Continental trends seem to have a rather solid base, not least as a result of the role of Barbara Skarga and her heritage (cf below). Actually the (then) dean of the Faculty of Sociology and Philosophy of the university (Stanislaw Czerniak), participating at the Plessner seminar, could be classified among the continental philosophy group. Significantly, the competition between philosophical traditions had just taken the form of a rivalry in the election of Czerniak’s successor for the dean of the faculty, where the Continental tradition had been defeated by an “analytic” philosopher. Since the seminar included also Mikhail Khorkov from Moscow as a participant, also a small link to the Russian “Continental philosophy”-scene was manifested. A volume with the proceedings of the seminar is foreseen, but has not, at the time of writing, been announced on the site of the Plessner society. Political philosophy - Communism Political philosophy occupies much attention in contemporary Continental philosophy in general – and the specific experiences of the ex-Communist countries may give a particular shade to this interest. At PAN a research programme and series of seminars on the theme of public discourse on communism is conducted by its section of literature. This project necessarily confronts rather sensitive subjects –notably since the government and public opinion in Poland has grown increasingly aggressive towards anything associated with the previous era. The group of researchers in the centre associate clearly to leading philosophers in the “post-modern” vein – (again: Žižek, Badiou, Rancière, Zygmunt Bauman etc.). One seminar in the series (June 11, 2012) focussed on Anti-Semitic aspects involved in the current disputes in Poland – one aspect of which was the return of some surviving Jewish communists with the Soviet army after liberation from German occupation, and taking leading positions in the new People’s Republic, also in its security services. This aspect is important to take into account when discussing the involvement of the rather rare Jewish personalities in Polish public and philosophical discourse, for example (cf. below) Woleński and Hartman). Adam Michnik, the leading media owner and liberal foreground figure, since the democratic turn in 1990, is of Jewish origin, just as Bauman. The latter was a leading figure in the Communist party, before his emigration partly because of the Anti-Semitic wave in, still Communist, Poland, 1968-70. While Michnik suggested that “Communism is rooted in a fear of liberty”, Bauman is known for his suggestion that the Nazi concentration and extermination camps were a logical consequence of Liberal Modernist social structure. One of the themes at the seminar in June focussed precisely on the discourse (myth) of a “foreign people” coming in and taking over in Poland (and the other East European Soviet-controlled states). This is a theme reminiscent of pre-war discourse on the conflict of civilisations (the Polish historian Koneczny, but also theories of the Russian linguist Trubeckoy), just as more recent themes (Huntingdon). There is a link to more articulate political philosophical theory, but just as in Russia reflection is tightly linked to current political combat and public debate. In Poland, perhaps significantly, one centre of political Left-wing discussion is a café-bookshop right opposite the Academy of Science at the main street of Warsaw (Nowy Świat) and next to the Department of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. The PAN seminar focussed at the feasibility of sorting the kinds of contemporary discourses on Communism, in public debates in Poland. One way suggested was a classification according to diverse myths, that is, a combination of a literary and anthropological approach, linking to Ernst Cassirer’s cultural philosophy of the 1920s, and perhaps also to more recent sociological themes by for example Bourdieu. In current Polish political discourse one might observe rehabilitation of inter-war fascist trends. The complex pattern, whereby the fascist leader of the inter-war period Sergiusz Piasecki was taken aboard by the Communist regime for the purpose of dividing the Catholic citizens may be an ingredient in this process. Piasecki was given the task of creating and leading the regime-supported “Pax” movement, Catholic by confession but loyal to the regime. Some publications are foreseen on the theme, but seem not to have appeared as yet. Kolakowski Another occasion of looking into the political-philosophical area as overlapping with everyday political disputes was given by a later PAN seminar in the programme of research on the heritage of Leszek Kołakowski, no doubt the best-known Polish philosopher in the post-war period. The seminar was organized by PAN, but took place in the premises of the Jewish research institute, adjacent to the rebuilt main Synagogue of Warsaw, actually in the area of the Warsaw ghetto during the German terror and extermination regime. Various aspects of Kołakowski’s production were highlighted – in his Marxist period and afterwards, notably after his emigration in 1968, when he took farewell of Marxism as such – approaching religious themes, not least inspired by studies of Medieval philosophy. Kołakowski’s earlier – rather close to the Communist regime – position was, according to one participant in the seminar rather an indication of his aversion to the pre-war Catholic “Falanga” (led by the above cited Piasecki) trends than a genuine association to Marx and Marxism. One of the participants in Kolakowski’s seminars (rather monologous lectures, he thought) emphasized his view on the post-war philosophy as a period of activism, following the break-down of rationalism of the 1930s. “After Husserl, Berdiaiev, Brzozowski, Spengler, Witkacy, Marxism was a rather pragmatic choice. Adam Schaff and Krajewski seemed to have fixed everything, they had a clear language. Kołakowski wore a mask, but his engagement was authentic”. One participant in the seminar, Andrzej Leder, also gave some institutional reflexions on the situation of Continental philosophy in Poland. He gave a very positive appreciation of the research environment of the Academy, which has its own PhD programme, receiving around 15 new students per year, some of them from neighbouring countries of the old Soviet domination area. He wanted to highlight some researchers and milieus particularly interested in Continental philosophy: Szymon Wróbel of the Academy, working on Foucault, Spinoza and Hobbes, Banasiak and Pieniazek in Łódz, as well as a group in Wrocław. Continental and Neo-Scholastic philosophy in Poland today One of the nestors of Neo-Scholastic philosophy in Poland is Antoni Stępień, professor emeritus of KUL in epistemology, and a scholar who strived to integrate some aspects of phenomenology into his own, primarily Neo-Thomist, approach. In this respect his aspirations coincided for a great part with those of the future pope Karol Wojtyła, who, as mentioned, taught for long at KUL, after acquiring his doctorate at Kraków for Ingarden. Stępień provided to me, personally, an overview of his assessment of the current philosophical situation in Poland. Though the approach to the project as such was the influence and reception of “Continental” philosophy, in the rather imprecise sense indicated above, Stępień, naturally enough, focussed on the role of diverse varieties of Neo-Thomist philosophy in contemporary Poland. Another recent interview has been made with Stępień, published on the site www.Academicon.pl. But also after the war the project of integrating phenomenology – mostly of a ”realist” Ingarden variety – into this general framework had some representatives in Poland. After Wojtyła , Józef Tischner – Ingarden’s last doctoral student before he was fired by the Communist authorities – represented a similar approach, today continued by scholars such as Stróżewski (cf. below), a venerated figure in the old generation of Polish philosophers, and president of the Polish philosophical society. But also other scholars from the younger generation represent the same approach: Judycki, formerly at KUL, now in Gdańsk, worked with Husserl’s last texts, Wojtysiak, now professor at KUL in epistemology among those. Neo-Thomism had a strong interest in cosmology and natural philosophy – an interest shared by some of the Twardowski disciples (Izydora Dąmbska). On the phenomenological side Gierulanka was another pupil of Ingarden – who criticized his theory of painting in the article on Lessing. Other disciples of Ingarden were Władysław Galewicz (in Switzerland) Półtawski, Golaszewska (Aesthetics) and Węgrzecki (the problem of the Other). Dialogue philosophy had, according to Stępień, few practitioners in Poland, save for Tischner. The new generation of phenomenologists in Poland, take, in Stępień’s view, a more critical stance to Ingarden. Existentialism was practically non-existent in Poland, with the exception of the logician Grzegorczyk (cf. below). In Stępień’s opinion the previous proponents of Marxism had more or less vanished, that is, changed their positions to positivism or eco-philosophy or the like. “Post-modern” thought is, according to him, rather marginal in Poland, rather a literary phenomenon. Heidegger had not been much studied in Poland, albeit to some degree in Warsaw, Cracow and Lublin. Marxist centres were earlier both Toruń and Poznań, where today there is a certain readiness to receive “post-modern” thought. Stępień meant that, generally speaking, younger philosophers in Poland tended to interest themselves rather in analytic philosophy – of course falling back to the rather powerful Polish current in the inter-war period, and also for some time after the war. Barbara Skarga One Polish scholar, who merits a special interest in a project investigating the role of “continental” philosophy is Barbara Skarga (1919-2009). She was liberated from a Soviet labour camp ten years after the war and could finish a PhD in Warsaw after the liberalisation in 1957, and got a professorship 1988 at the PAN. Her publications were mainly devoted to the philosophy of time and of history, notably Bergson, but also to the positivist traditions. She also treated metaphysical themes, though not from a Catholic standpoint, since she belonged to the Protestant minority in Poland. Her work is considered as representing an opening to “post-modernist” thought in Poland. A society in her honour – and announcing a prize in her name - had just been founded when a seminar devoted to both her thought and to the general situation of philosophy in Poland held in June 2012. The first prize to be awarded was foreseen for an essay in metaphysics. The seminar included a lively discussion on the subject of dividing philosophical research and positions along the borderlines of “continental” and “analytic”. A small majority seemed to resist the dichotomy, while for example Andrzej Leder (cited above) defended it as a meaningful broad classification of philosophical interests and problem areas. Both historically and thematically, viz. as a perspective on the relationship between justice and thought there is a justification, apart from historical, for the disputed division he held. Leder emphasized in his intervention and in the discussion the hegemony of nominalism in 20 C philosophy. He also underlined the need for syntheses in philosophical work – and suggested that also syntheses of articles should be permitted as a ground for “habilitation” (second doctoral degree, “docent”) theses in Poland. The gap between the main currents of philosophy today, was in the discussion suggested to be rather of a discursive nature, not a matter of language or terms. The above-mentioned Migasiński focussed on the gap between “scientistic” currents, rather hegemonic in Polish philosophy since the Lwów-Warsaw school, on one hand, and the confrontation with thinking rooted in the phenomenological tradition, inspired by Roman Ingarden. Combinations of these two currents are proposed (Francisco Varela), but the gap is nevertheless significant, still. Poręba (Warsaw) meant that the present situation of philosophy was a situation of choosing between paradigms in Kuhn’s sense, and that it is an important task to engage people in examining the existent “Anglo-Saxon” and “Continental” paradigms respectively. Although the divide is rather a discursive one, it is harmful and leads to a “war of the –isms”. Analytic philosophy tended to take over the institutional framework, by way of its specialised publications – out of touch with the sphere of public space, for example criticism of capitalism, taking positions in cultural matters etc. Also followers of the Frankfurt school, he contended, were integrating much of the discourse of analytic philosophy. Janusz Ostrowski, (Warsaw), from the steering committee of the Skarga foundation, himself focussing on political philosophy, emphasized the need of a systematic philosophy, à la Hegel and in line with Skargas approach: there is a need for new thinking, not so much focussing on specialized work. His judgement on the role of Christian (primarily Neo-Scholastic) philosophy in Poland was rather contrary to that Stępien’s, cited above – that is, Christian philosophy is a rather marginal phenomenon in contemporary Poland. The group around the Skarga Foundation appears to be central for a connection with work on “continental” philosophical themes in Poland. Some of its members (Leder) have already had connections with Södertörn University College. A mediatic dissenter A particular case of “synthetic” philosophical work might be represented by the philosopher Jan Hartman, who holds a chair at the medical, not the philosophical, faculty of the Jagiellonian university (Cracow). Hartman, himself trained at KUL, though an active member of the Jewish (Bnai Brith Society) community in Poland, and also a disciple of Woleński (cf. above, equally an active member of the same society) is very active in public debates, He has also been a candidate for the Left party to the Polish parliament. He is active in international contexts and lectures in Tel Aviv, for example. His survey of the structure of Polish contemporary philosophy contained both administrative-institutional aspects and more content-related points of view. In his view the flourishing period after installment of democracy and independence from Soviet domination, in the 90s was over. This period had seen around 40 books being published annually and the number of philosophy students was between 10000 and 20 000. The number of students now had gone down to about 6-7000 – partly because state funding of evening ( “zaoczne”) studies had been stopped. Generally speaking, philosophy is in his view in a process of social marginalisation, where scholars tend to work in isolation, taking inspiration from the West, but not from a domestic exchange. Philosophical publications are predominantly in Polish, simply because language skills are not sufficient for writing in other languages. The number of academic posts in philosophy is still considerable – with 1600 professors (in Cracow only, about 100 posts) of philosophy Poland equals France! The number of “habilitated” philosophers is, however, considerably lower and the total of “professors of human sciences”, (viz. the top title in Polish academia), is just about 100, as far as philosophy is concerned. There are, at present, thus good career opportunities for philosophers in the public sector, even if most academic teachers stop doing research after their PhD. About 50 philosophers have now top ranking posts in universities. Public servants have life-long contracts, but the salary of an academic teacher is modest – between 5 and 10 000 Zł, (6-1100 €). Usually university posts are not open for competition - incumbents are appointed by heads of departments, faculties etc. Hartman wanted to cite five philosophers who are well known by the general public: Magdalena Środa, Himself Tadeusz Gadacz (Kraków) Jacek Hołówla Jan Woleński Some academic “cult”-philosophers could also be mentioned: Michał Karkowski, a Polonist in Warsaw, and Angela Bielik-Robson, working in England. Both these are widely read and cited. About 15 other persons are mostly working with commentaries of Western philosophy or cultural critique. (Adam Lipszyc, Szymon Wróbel at PAN, Adam Zalewski in Częstochowa, and himself). Other names he wanted to mention were Jan Gundowicz, Światosław Florian and and Marek Siernek, Hegel specialists. Books are mostly written for a younger audience - there is however a general lack of an intellectual milieu. There are no generally accepted great personalities in Polish philosophy (comparable to Kołakowski, Ingarden, Tatarkiewicz in the 1950-70s) In his view, the very concept of philosophy is destroyed, one has to talk about “post-philosophy” , and the divide between analytic and non-analytic philosophy is meaningless. Very few are concentrating on analytical philosophy only (Szubka in Szczecin). Twardowski’s heritage One particular aspect of Polish philosophy has already been touched upon several times in this report, viz. the tradition stemming from the “father of modern Polish philosophy”, Kazimierz Twardowski. My own work on his philosophy focusses on its relation to the historical beginnings of modern phenomenology in Edmund Husserl. This approach, as noted, to some extent contradicts the traditional Polish view of Twardowski, focussing at his role of the founder of the Lwów-Warsaw school, a tradition normally associated to formal logic, theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, and generally rather sympathetic to logical positivism, and later analytic philosophy. On the other hand Twardowski himself – for example in the essay “Pragmatofobia i symbolomania” reacted harshly to some of the attitudes of his disciples. Twardowski, in his own teachings and interest in what was termed (descriptive or “empirical”) psychology. Also after accepting Husserl’s criticism of “psychologism”, he retained informal and descriptive reasoning, not very far from the Husserlian approach, although he took a reserved attitude to Husserl himself and his transcendental approach to phenomenology, after 1907. I have argued that Twardowski’s own theory of objects of re/presentations was however a likely background to Husserl’s own theory of “bracketing”, central to his “pure” phenomenology, whereby the existence of objects were set aside and the pure description of any object (existing, hallucinatory, illusory, dreamt etc.) was put at the centre of philosophical method. Actually Twardowski’s general approach to philosophy go well together with the phenomenological tradition as outlined by Husserl, and continued by Ingarden. The latter, as mentioned, never accepted Husserl’s “transcendental” approach, “bracketing” the existence objects. As a whole Twardowski’s influence, maybe together with the Neo/Scholastic tradition, is likely to be one reason for working with philosophies other than the analytic approach. Therefore the ambitious project of recording in a digitally accessible format, to a general public on the Internet, the entire production of Twardowski and his followers in the Lwów-Warsaw school pursued by the French research council, CNRS, should also be included in a consideration of the reception and development of Continental philosophy in contemporary Poland. The task of doing this work is entrusted to a Polish philosopher, partly trained at Warsaw University but fulfilling her scholarly career in France, Wioletta Miskiewicz. Miskiewicz herself, as a scholar specialised in Twardowski’s “overarching” attitude, including both descriptive psychology and a respect for rigid, though informal, logical reasoning, finds it far from meaningless to discuss the gap between diverse philosophical traditions (such as phenomenological and analytic, Continental and Anglo-Saxon). Instead she finds them pertinent to a study of the school initiated by Twardowski. In some Polish circles – notably expressed by the nestor of the Lwów-Warsaw school Jan Woleński on several occasions – a rather sweeping criticism of “post-modernism” in general has occurred. As noted, Woleński is perhaps the most reputable among philosophers in present-day Poland, playing a major part in research communities, juries and funding institutions. This means, of course, that his influence is, administratively and financially speaking, considerable. Continental philosophy at the IX Congress of Polish philosophy, September 2012 General assemblies of Polish philosophers have taken place irregularly, but the frequency have increased in later years. Such gatherings reflect tendencies of philosophical research and positions, and offer occasions for gauging the situation of particular trends and schools, such as the “Continental”, traditions. Starting in 1923 in Twardowski’s city Lwów, and centred around him, there was an interruption between 1936 and 1977, and only in the 21st century a regularity may have been installed. The 2012 congress in the holiday resort Wisła close to the Czech border gathered more than 600 participants from research sites and universities in the country, in 24 sections and a number of special symposia, panel debates etc. The material, in a volume of abstracts, gave a reasonably good impression of the positions and trends, submitted in presentations of papers during the assembly. As a whole Continental trends of philosophy in Poland were broadly represented, but in no way dominant. No particular or dominant adherence to the traditions of the analytic currents – for example connected to the Lwów-Warsaw school - could either be observed. The impression was, similarly to other broad gatherings, one of eclecticism, where many of the presentations are comments to works of other philosophers. The following notes could not give but a selective glimpse of sessions with attention to themes associated to “continental” trends. A more careful account has to go deeper into the content and discourse of the abstracts submitted – at the time of writing there does not seem to be any proceedings of the entire conference foreseen, as far as available documentation shows. The presentations and debates were almost exclusively in Polish, which might be a sign of self-esteem, but also to a low level of international exchange. The solemn opening of the conference was centred on a lecture by the above-mentioned disciple of Ingarden, Władysław Stróżewski, president of the Polish philosophical society, on the theme of przeświadczenie, a term difficult, even for the lecturer, to translate into English or German philosophical terminology. The term is related to “experience”, but also conviction, belief, insight, testimony, but literally means “lightning-through”, which intimates a slightly Heideggerian association. His lecture is in extenso published in the volume of abstracts. The section on gender philosophy (the heading did not use that term but the ordinary Polish term for “sex”) did start out with some references to current research on feminist theory, Foucault’s and other differentiations of sex/gender. Rather soon more administrative and daily political considerations took over – the controversiality of feminism is considerable in Poland, in many respects, and Magdalena Środa, who conducted the section, has even been next to physically attacked at her home university in Warsaw. Section 8 on the philosophy of the human being naturally associated to the Plessner seminar referred to above. The section was headed by one of the leading phenomenologists in the country, A. Przyłębski, editor-in-chief of the yearbook of phenomenology in Poland. He emphasized that already Dilthey had undertaken an “anthropological turn” of philosophy, before both Scheler and Plessner. Surprisingly, he devoted little attention to Husserl’s criticism of “anthropologism” – notably against Dilthey – as a form of vicious circle (of which “psychologism” is just a variety). From a Swedish point of view the attention to Cassirer’s later philosophy, worked out in Gothenburg in the 1930s, deserved a special interest. The point in the lecture was to read Dilthey as a kind of advocate for seeing categories as presuppositions rather than empirical “petrefacts”, linking life philosophy with hermeneutics, cultural theory, and biology. Reference was made to the journal Analiza i egzystencja, mainly edited from Szczecin University, but also with Wojciech Rabinowicz (Lund) and Ariana Betti (Twardowski expert) in the editing board. The journal has mainly an analytical approach, but also transcends the border-line to Continental themes. The following presentation, by Jaromir Brejdak, also from Szczecin, took up similar themes, comparing Dilthey, Scheler and Plessner, arguing that Dilthey should be regarded as even more phenomenological than the early Husserl… Also Plessner’s notion of consciousness should, according to the speaker, be regarded as “intentional”, differently from Kant. The section on social and political philosophy had a clearer analytical character, an exception being a study of Hannah Arendt’s works on the relationship between individuals and society. A panel on philosophy, religion and politics had foreseen the participation of Zygmunt Bauman, who however finally did not turn up. The debate mostly reflected controversies in everyday politics in Poland, where Środa (cf. above) wanted to distinguish between “warm” and “cold” relationships between politics, philosophy and religion. Her main point was to underline the notion of injustice rather than rights in political philosophy. She also recalled John Stuart Mill’s plea for socialism in his later works. The participant from the Catholic university KUL, (Ks. Prof Jan Bronk, that is, a priest) adopted a “cold” attitude – declaring “his lack of opinions” in general on the subject. Another participant (Szahaj) pointed out that the link between the Catholic Church and the right-wing political camp (as in contemporary Poland) was not self-evident: on the contrary, French philosophical Catholic tradition contained quite different positions (Maritain). A special symposium on the notion of transcendence was held by the Jan Patočka Phenomenological society. The introduction was by Artur Mordka (Rzeszów) who took aboard diverse notions of transcendence, both religious and secular. He saw Patočka’s adoption of Heidegger’s suspension of the subject-object relation as a kind of transcendence applying the Christian idea of sacrifice – notably the god who resigned from his own divinity. Another intervention (Zonhar from Brno) treated the relationship between Masaryk and Patočka, on the issue of man as a social being. He pointed out that Masaryk, as a Christian philosopher, had rather little in common with Patočka, whom he saw as a purely secular thinker – perhaps with the exception that “eternity might be a corrective”. Wojciech Starzyński from PAN is the editor of a considerable correspondence 1957-1973 between Patočka and Irena Krońska in Warsaw (at the time working on a philosophical encyclopedia together with Ajdukiewicz). The special symposium on “New roads in phenomenology”, was arranged by the Polish phenomenological society, which publishes a quarterly and a yearbook. The above-mentioned Migasiński has been a leading figure in the society. One intervention (Przybylski, Poznań) focussed on the relation between phenomenology and cognitive science (cf. Delescu, above) – with particular attention to Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the body. Merleau-Ponty had in his view ideas that were valuable, but did not have access to a number of Husserl’s manuscripts, now published, nor to the empirical findings of neuroscience and brain research. (Przybylski has spent some time in Copenhagen with Dan Zahavi’s institute). Other presentations dealt with a relation between Dilthey and Husserl (Plotka, Gdańsk) and Starzyński, (cf above) treated Depraz, phenomenology and eroticism (references to the French philosophers Marion and Henry). The history of Polish philosophy was a subject of several sections. One treated the presence of the Russian exiled philosopher and theorist of religion Nikolaj Losskij, who participated in the second Polish congress of philosophy under the presidency of Twardowski, in Warsaw 1927. Some interest in a “Slavonic” philosophy was shown in the inter-war period, one conference was held in Lwów, also with the collaboration of Twardowski. Losskij himself represented a philosophy of evolution with a religious ingredient (slightly reminding of Teilhard de Chardin, in the 1950s) . A panel on the future of philosophy in Poland was introduced by Woleński, who declared himself somewhat melancholic, not least because of the gap between analytic and Continental philosophy, which he saw as a source of conflict and grossly simplified. Poland as a philosophical territory… As noted by Hartman above, Poland has preserved the extensive philosophical infrastructure since the Communist regime, where, by and large, the task of philosophy, together with sociology, was to underpin official doctrines. Poland is in that sense a “big” philosophical territory. Nevertheless – and with due respect to the very rich variation of positions, scholarly efforts, institutions and production, perceived both at the diverse meetings with Polish philosophers individually and during the Congress – there might be space for some reflection on the judgements expressed by Hartman. Depending on the perspective, similar judgements, however, might be expressed, for diverse periods, on most other milieus of philosophy. With due reservations, some impressions might be summarized as follows: • The extensive quantitative infrastructure does not correspond to an equal creative power • The lack of language competence of Polish university employed staff hampers cooperation with international research, as obviously does the reverse lack of competence in Slavonic languages in “the West” o Translations are costly and participation in international meetings difficult • Paradoxically, these circumstances make Polish philosophy very “continental” in the sense of being devoted mainly to comments on Western theorists • The official link to Marxism has vanished, but is to some extent replaced by a kind of “normalscientific” lack of independence, with timid connections to other philosophical currents. • The strong Polish logical tradition survives on the plan of teaching, but innovative achievements seem to be scarce • The Brentanist tradition from Twardowski does not seem to be a living scholarly movement • Religion seems to play a considerably smaller role than in contemporary Russian philosophy, despite the rather strong academic position held by the Catholic university in Lublin, being a kind of elite institution in the private sector o Despite the important position which philosophy still plays in the Catholic training of the clergy, the Catholic tradition does not seem to play a significant role for the reception and development of “Continental” currents of thought. • Interest in political theory and philosophy is high, and perhaps even flourishing. Political positions are often clearly spelt out, from Stępień’s conservative standpoint to Hartman’s, Środa’s and Woleński’s more leftist positions. 4. Some comparative observations This report is an explorative exercise and aims first and foremost at promoting an overview – much of the fact material is available in encyclopaedias, not least Wikipedia, where practically all the persons and works referred to are subject to some treatment, in one of the relevant languages – English, German, Russian, Polish. The remit of the project was first of all a comparative one: to look into the role of what is, in the countries that were under Soviet domination until 1989, with all reservations and prudence, termed Continental philosophy, that is here first and foremost French and German philosophy of the last half-century. Neither a detailed philosophical discussion nor analysis of themes and proposals enounced, nor an analytic reading of some of the relevant works has been included. In this sense, the report is programmatically superficial, in line with its ambition to be explorative. This should encourage curiosity for scholarly contacts and stimulate studies. It could not be sufficiently underlined that one condition for the improvement of knowledge of philosophical research and development of this half of Europe presupposes a basic knowledge of the most widely used languages in scholarly communication in the countries concerned. English may be the lingua franca of most present day scholarly communication, but production of research publications will for a foreseeable future be pluralistic in the linguistic sense, as will, hopefully, also philosophical perspectives, outlooks, discourses and traditions. Philosophical communication is, just as other scholarly communication, a reality, and the truly searching attitude, which is a prerequisite for philosophical work, must provide for diversity of discourse. This applies despite the, maybe inherent, pretention of philosophers of having discovered final truths, at least in the sense of having revealed mistakes of earlier products, or proclaiming the superiority of their own new methods… This dialectic, or perhaps unsolvable paradox (aporia), should hurt the self-confidence of the community, and therefore also unfold new insights. The overall impression, or finding, of the work undertaken has nevertheless been a view of a sphere of intense philosophical activity. Despite the rather critical – certainly not unfounded – judgements of both the Russian, Belarusian, and Polish contemporary philosophical infrastructure, scholarly level and creative production, an observer must admit that the philosophical work is as intense as in other European or American areas. A comparison of philosophical teaching, education and research work with Western achievements is close to impossible for someone who does not master the languages used in philosophical production in the area – that is, for the overwhelming part the vernacular, not the Western languages. And it might be true that much of scholarly activity in these countries still suffers from the arthritis from the oppressive structure of previous regimes. This is one argument for an extension of contacts and exchange with this half of Europe, which certainly will benefit also those who discover the wealth of ideas and discourses beyond the old Iron curtain. 5. Conclusions and suggestions Further studies As suggested above, this report is to be regarded as an encouragement and promotion of further studies, and to the construction of necessary infrastructure for establishing a base for such studies. Rather few concrete suggestions for studies have been included, but the reader will hopefully find some material in the text or in the material associated to the text. Studying philosophy of other linguistic and cultural domains than one’s own requires a basic familiarity with the respective environment. It is a natural consequence of this project to insist on the urgent reorganisation of a base of Slavonic linguistic competence, and the end of the reduction of university (and high school!) offer of Slavonic languages in Sweden. This is a general immediate requirement, although the demand from students for these languages may not be very developed at present. Södertörn University College has a particular responsibility in this respect, due to its privileged position in enjoying funding from the Baltic foundation. Just as theologians have to learn the languages of the texts they are studying and analysing, philosophers have to be trained in languages other than the dominant scholarly vehicle of communication, in order to acquire proficiency in reading texts and participate in exchange, benefitting from unexpected innovative contributions, or discarding unimportant aspects in standard literature. In the course of this project some works and philosophers of the past that might be candidates for further study have been singled out Kołakowski Krąpiec Lotman Medievists in Lublin Russian emigrant philosophers: Šestov, Berdiaev, Frank, Schaff Skarga Špet. Some circles, research centres and journals have also been mentioned, and of course individual researchers should be added to that list. A very provisional list of names is attached to this report. A structure of exchange The unique resources put at the disposal of Södertörn University College by the Baltic Foundation should be mobilized to build up an infrastructure of exchange. There is already a certain readiness to acquire publications from Eastern and Central Europe in the Södertörn university library, but this readiness has to be stabilized and supported by a supply of courses and special research facilities for studies in the area concerned. Research is not only projects by qualified researchers into new areas but also presupposes a basis in the infrastructure for pursuing these projects, most importantly language competence. Apart from training in the languages, history and culture of this part of Europe, it is natural to organize a systematic exchange of researchers, and students. The Nordic networks and institutions of phenomenological studies should, for example, preferably also extend invitations to Eastern European countries. Also the arrangement of special seminars together with some of the universities in, for example, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania could be envisaged, focussing on some of the particular aspects, on philosophical authors and trends in those countries. It might be the case, that in some contexts, initially, interpretation services have to be included in the organisation plans. Preferably such seminars should have a long-term perspective, for example one per semester, during five years. Researchers and master students from Sweden should be encouraged to look into the specific philosophical conditions and traditions of East and Central European countries, supplying travel grants, elementary linguistic training and other resources needed. Students from groups with roots in cultures and languages in the relevant part of Europe should be specially encouraged to employ their capacities for projects, for example by scholarships, and travel grants linked to their philosophical studies or research. Some of the circles and research groups mentioned in the report deserve special attention and are likely to be fruitful contacts for research exchange with Södertörn University College, for example • The Centre for phenomenological and hermeneutic studies in St Petersburg • Gumanitarnyj universitet in Moscow • The editorial groups around the journals Logos and Horizon • The journal Topos in Vilnius and its editors, in Vilnius, Minsk and Warsaw • The journal Analiza i Egzystencja in Szczecin • The research groups, associations and centres on phenomenology and on political philosophy (discourse analysis) at PAN in Warsaw Further contacts might be valuable with the universities in Poznan, Wroclaw and Lodz in Poland. Research group The special conditions, cultural, theoretical, and financial, of Södertörn University College, and the remit of the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, might favour a launch of a special research team on the philosophy of Eastern Europe. A focus on the currents that are labelled “continental” is natural, which would imply an interdisciplinary approach on a philosophical basis. That would mean that research on religion, culture, ideas and rhetoric is an ingredient. A special study on national and religious components in philosophy could be an initial phase of such an approach, bearing in mind the particular attention such themes have gained in Russia, but also traditionally in Poland and other countries. International conference One traditional way of launching such a research group and a programme of research on a medium or long term in the academic context would be the organisation of an international conference or seminar, inviting scholars from a number of East and Central European countries. The conference should if possible be prepared by working out some investigative questions, asking participants to submit short accounts on the situation of philosophy of the “continental” brands in their respective academic, and non-academic, milieus and social context. Such a conference could be organised in a rather near future, profiting from the contacts already established. It is desirable that the proposed efforts should be regarded as a whole programme, as an opening up for the “Baltic dimension” specifically in philosophy. 6. List of persons The list below is an unsystematic enumeration of philosophers, dead or alive, mentioned or referred to in the report, or in its context, some of whom have contributed by interviews, presentations or seminars to the material underlying the text. No particular order, not even alphabetical has been attempted. RUSSIA Magun Vlassov Kolmogorov Vygotskij Lotman Špet Semjon Frank Losev, Soloviov Chrenov Pocinók Markov ,Sjevtjenko Baneyan Solonin Gumilyov Artyošenko Tjernigovskaja Gantjev Šestov Berdjajev Serge Lesour Kryglov Tjernoglazov Lyzov Artamosjkina Rozanov Dostojevskij Florenskij Sadovnikov Maiatskij Plotnikov Anasjvili Subarov Aleksandr Pogrebnjak Zaitsev Doroseev Marat Zamirovitj Štajn L BELARUS Vjacheslav Stjorn Barkouski Sarna POLAND Chmielewska Leder Stępień Lipszyc Mrozik-Gombrowicz, Tokacki Wojtyła Zalewski , Grzegorczyk Zawadzka Migasiński Kalinowski Florian Żukowski Wróbel Krąpiec Gundowicz Dąmbska Baniasiak Kamiński Woleński Gromska Pieniazek Ingarden Szubka Gierulanka Judycki Kłósak Kaniowski Półtawski Gołaszewska Stróżewski Wodzinski Witkowski Galewicz Węgrzecki Wojtysiak Paczkowska-Łagowska Znamierowski Tischner Bukowski Brylebski Koneczny Jadacki Hartman Placek Skarga Biednarek Środa Hołówka Ostrowski Pólręba Karkowski Czerniak Staniszkis Kotarbński Haremska Plotka Lesniewski Przyłębski Urbaniak Mordka Lukasiewicz Brejdak Bauman Krońska Tarski Godek Szahaj Zonhar Ajdukiewicz Bankiewicz Bronk Starzyński Przybylski Miskiewicz Blaustein Other countries UKRAINE : Vachtanr Kebuladze Andrei Bogdan 7. Literature 7.1 Surveys Lesourd, Françoise (ed.) (2010). Dictionnaire de la philosophie russe . Lausanne: L’age D’homme. Krugosvet gives a good web-based survey of Russian philosophy "Кто сегодня делает философию в России", том 1, 2007 г., http://klex2.ru/4vs Who does philosophy in Russia today Vol 1 Lourié, Ossip Davidovitch. (1905) La Philosophie Russe: Contemporaine. Faximilutgåva USA ca 2000 Tatarkiewicz, Władysław (1981). Historia Filozofii. Tom 1-3. Warszawa: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. Wasik, Wiktor (1958). Historia filozofii polskiej Tom I-II. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczej Pax. A rather ambitious documentation of the proceedings IX Congress of Polish philosophy is found (in Polish) at the site www.Academicon.pl 7.2 Some selected works (Some lists of published works have been supplied in foot-notes. ) Brzozowski, Stanisław (2008). Mocarz. (play) Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej. Cavallin, Jens (1987). Content and object. Husserl, Twardowski and Psychologism. Phaenomenologica 142. Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Gogacz, Mieczysław. (1985). Człowiek i jego relacje. Materiały do filozofii człowieka. (Neo-Scholastical text-book in philosophical anthropology) Warszawa: Akademia teologii katolickiej (ATK). Gogacz, Mieczysław (1987). Elementarz metafizyki. Warszawa: ATK. Hartman, Jan (2010). Polityka filozofii. Eseje. (The politics of philosophy. Essays. Kraków: Universitas. Jadczak, Ryszard. (1991). Kazimierz Twardowski. Twórca szkoły lwowski-warszawskiej. (K.T. The creator of the Lwów-Warsaw school). Torun: Adam Marszałek. Hartman, Jan (2011). Wiedza, Byt, Człowiek. Z głównych zagadnień filozoficznych (Knowledge, being, Human, - on the main problems of philosophy.). Kraków: Universitas. (under translation). Kamiński, Stanisław, ed. (1980). Theory of being to understand reality. Lublin: Towarzystwo naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Kusch, Martin. (1995). Psychologism. A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London: Routledge.  Lotman, Yurij. (1976). Semiotics of Cinema. (Transl. by Mark Suino.) (Michigan Slavic Contributions.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Семиотика кино и проблемы киноэстетики (Russian) Müller, Jan Werner (2013). Demokratins tidsålder. Göteborg: Daidalos. Paśniczek, Jacek (Ed.).(1992). Theories of objects: Meinong and Twardowski. Lublin: Uniwersitet Marii Skłodowskiej. Špet, Gustav (2007). Iskusstvo kak vid znanija. Izbrannye trudy po filosofii kultury. (Art as an kind of knowledge. Selected works on cultural philosophy.)Ed. and Preface by Ščedrina, Tat’jana: Idei Gustava Špeta v kontekste fenomenologičeskoj estetiki. (Gustav Špet’s ideas in a phenomenological aesthetical context). Moskva: Rosspen. Špet, Gustav (2010). Filosofija i nauka. Lekcionnye kursy. (Philosophy and science. Lectures). Moskva: Rosspen. Stępień, Antoni. (1966). O metodzie teorii poznania. (On the method of theory of knowledge). (Series Studia z filozofii teoretycznej) Lublin: Towarrzystwo naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Twardowski, Kazimierz (1999), On Actions, Products and other Topics in Philosophy. Ed. By Johannes Brandl and Jan Woleński . Atlanta: Rodopi. Twardowski, Kazimierz. (1894, 1982). Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Wien: K. u. K. Verlagsbuchhandlung. 7.3 Periodicals Analiza i egzystencja. Pismo filozoficzne. Szczecin. Kryzys. Przewodnik krytiki politycznej. (2009)( A series of publications on political subjects) Warszawa: Wydawnictwo krytyki politycznej. Logos, filosofsko-literaturnyj Žurnal. #5 78 2010. Fenomenologija segodnja: vzgljad iz Rossii. (Phenomenology today: view from Russia). Principia: Pisma koncepcyjne z filozofii i socjologii teoretycznej Tom LIV_LV Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński. 2011. Principia. Ekspres filozoficzny. No 42 2008. Supplement to Principia with surveys of appointments, defences of theses, publications in philosophy in Poland. Yearbook of phenomenology (Poland) Znak. 1969 181-182. Rok (year) XXI Mistzrowie naszego czasu (The masters of our time). Annexes 1 List of seminars, sections etc.of St Petersburg Days of philosophy November 17-19, 2011. The list follows the official printed conference programme. In some cases the presenters are mentioned by name, in other seminars the presenters were introduced orally. Plenary symposia (First day of introduction) 1. The axiology of the Russian constitutionalism: Unity and plurality 2. Spiritual search and corporeal practice in contemporary man 3. Power and values 4. Philosophy and society: awards on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Russian society of philosophy XIII Annual scholarly inter-university conference: Culture and values IV International research conference: Karl Marx, Post-Marxism and dialectics, synergetics, ’globalistics’ in a time of new values International conferences ♣ The sense of life: to find and lose ♣ “Bildung” and communication: The value of “the Other” ♣ The metaphysics of art: The value of the Classical in art and philosophy ♣ Ontological research in the contemporary world: theory, axiology, practice (CANCELLED) Section of independent philosophy Philosophy as value of humanity XXVIII Conference of the Scientific centre of philosophical comparative research and socio-humanistic inquiry ”Worlds of values” in contemporary philosophy: a comparative horizon All-Russian scientific conference: “Worlds of values” in the cultures of the East (unlabelled kind of conference) Values of contemporary man in the light of a realist world view All-Russian conference Rationality and existence Theoretical conference with international participation Philosophy on Ethos: the theory of value of ethics XVI annual conference of the discipline of philosophical anthropology Problems and perspectives in philosophical anthropology: exchange of symbols and difficulties of translation International research conference: Philosophy of media V Social problems of media realities: Inequality of media, media violence, freedom of media All-Russian youth conference (students) Theoretical and exemplary ethics: tradition and perspectives (42 different papers) Seminar The axiology of personality in Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology Workshops Scholarly knowledge as a historical-cultural value V.V Rozanov in the field of diverse value orientations: “Small words and small talks” The heritage from L.N. Gumiljov: for and against – on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Gumiljov. Scientific-practical seminar ”Eurasianism” : theory of history, theory of value, ideology Open seminar -symposium The analytics of the wallet Workshop Truth as value and the problem of truch values in contemporary Russian culture. Unspecified context Values on a horizon of risks Workshop for philosophers and authors in Russia and St Petersburg The sense of philosophy and literature values: divergences and community Workshop with international participation Values and communication in contemporary society Colloquium Education of the human being Workshop The potential of the “Different” to form “worlds of values” Workshop Evaluation and projecting a universe of values in a globalising society XXVII Nietzsche-seminar Value, truth, being Workshop Journalism in the world of politics: difference and coincidence in values Research seminar Logic and deontology: On the occasion of 60 years after the publication of G.H. von Wright’s “Deontic logic” Workshops Successful socialisation of personality as a value for contemporary humankind Renaissance for life values – the transition to highly developed civilizations International scholarly – practical seminar The transformation of “value worlds” in contemporary man and drugs Theoretical seminar Boundary issues (mysticism, death …) Workshop Values in technology and natural science Scholarly-practical seminar Philosophy as a profession (Unspecified) The new century: harmony between nature and intellect: values on their way from logocentrism to systemocentrism, cognitive technology, synergy Workshop The value horizons of Russian culture Conference The philosophy of the history of philosophy: obligation and connection (on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Prof K A Sergeev) Workshops The genealogy of values in the philosophy of the Russian “Silver age” The anthropology of cultural heritage The journal ”Logos” : Non-institutional forms of professional philosophy in today’s Russia – experiences from 20 years passed and new research tasks ANNEX 2 IX Polish congress of philosophy September 17-21, 2012 in Wisła For details on sections, responsible persons, participants, presentations etc. see the conference programme and volume of abstracts. Below is just a summary of the congress agenda and translations of the sections and panels of the congress. Agenda 17 September 15.00 Opening of the congress: Main administrator of the congress Alexandra Kuzior, Vice-Chancellor of the College of Technology in Śląsk (Silesia) Vice-Chancellor of the Sląsk University President of the Polish Philosophical Society (PTF) Władysław Stróżewski, Chairman of the Philosophical committee of the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) Piotr Gutowski, Introductory lecture: W. Stróżewski: ”On experience/convictions ((przeświadczenia) in life and art” 18 Dinner (Kolacja) 20 Entertainment 18 September 9-11 Parallel panel discussions Philosophy and labour market Philosophy and art Gender difference as a philosophical problem Meeting of the editorial board of ”Analiza i Egzystencja” 11.20-13.30 Sections and special symposia 13.30-15 Lunch (Obiad) 15-17 Sections and special symposia 17-18 Special lecture and award of prize, arranged by the journal ”Przegląd Filozoficzny” (Philosophical Survey) 18 Dinner 20 Entertainment 19 september 9-11 Panel discussions Does philosophy need history of philosophy? Philosophy, politics, religion “Politicalness” and post-democracy 11-16 Book show 11.20-13.30 Sections and symposia 13.30 Obiad 15-18 Sections and symposia 18 Kolacja 20 Entertainment 21 Meetings of the committee of philosophy of PAN and the Polish society of philosophy 20 September 9-11 Panels Ethics and business Philosophy and sports Philosophy in the XXI Centurry Technology-Philosophy-Society Sustainable development: Philosophy, ethics, politics 11.20-13.30 Sections etc 13.30 Lunch 15-18 Sections mm 16 Lecture for students: prof Jan Woleński 18.30-19.45 Termination of the congress 19.45 Banquet with dance Special symposia 1 Man and transcendence: VI meeting of the Phenomenological Patočka society (Fenomenologiska Patočkasällskapet) 2 Philosophy on Death 3 Contextualism 4 New ways for phenomenology 5 Varieties of explanation Thematic sections 1 Axiology 2 Philosophical didactics 3 Ecophiloosophy and sustainable development 4 Epistemology 5 Aesthetics 6 Ethics a. Bioethics b. Business ethics 7 Philosophy and social sciences 8 Philosophy of Man 9 Dialogue philosophy 10 Feminist philosophy and gender studies 11 Philosophy of language 12 Philosophy of culture 13 Philosophy of law 14 Philosophy of nature 15 Philosophy of religion 16 Social and political philosophy 17 Philosophy of technology 18 Philosophy of mind and cognitive science 19 Philosophy of the East 20 History of philosophy a. Modern and contemporary philosophy b. The history of Polish philosophy c. Antique and medieval philosophy 21 Logic 22 Metaphilosophy 23 Methologogy and the philosophy of science 24 Ontology and metaphysics ANNEX 3 Programme of St Petersburg Days of Philosophy Nov 2012 The programme is extensive, cf. http://philosophy.spbu.ru/en/6396/8342 ANNEX 4 Who does what in russian philosophy today? CONTENTS. TENTATIVE TRANSLATIONS ВВЕДЕНИЕ introduction Нилогов А. Что такое современная русская философия? . What is contemporary Russian philosophy?. . . . . . .8 Нилогов А. «Вечное дежавю» философии . . . .The eternal déjà-vu of philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 ФИЛОСОФСКИЕ БЕСЕДЫ PHILOSOPHICAL CONVERSATIONS Ашкеров А. Нация — это постоянный флэш_моб…This is a continuous ’flash mob’ . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Васюков В. Формализация философии . .The formalisation of philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Галковский Д. Альтернативный русский философ . . An alternative Russian philosopher. . . . . . . . . . .49 Гиренок Ф. Где пушки — там и философия! . . Where the cans are – there is also philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Дмитриев В. Граф_анализ . . . . . The graphical analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Дубровский Д. Субъективная реальность . . . Subjective reality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Зиновьев А. Рабства без рабовладельцев не бывает . . There is no slavery without slave-owners. . . . . . . . . .90 Кралечкин Д. Мира нет и не надо . .There is no peace and no need of it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 Малер А. Неовизантизм как новый большой стиль . . Neo-Byzantinism as a new big style. . . . . . . . .110 Мамлеев Ю. Русская философия не должна уступать русской литературе . . Russian philosophy should not give way to Russian literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 Матвейчев О. Миром правят философы! . .Philosophers rule with peace! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 Миронов В. Философия как самосознание культуры . .Philosophy as the cultural consciousness . . . . . . . .151 Нилогов А. Философия — это сплошной ressentiment . .Philosophy – that is a compact ressentiment . . . . . . .175 Петровская Е. Назвать себя философом — большая ответственность . . . . . To call yourself a philospoher – a great responsibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192 Пятигорский А. I. Честно говоря, никакой русской философии нет... . . .Honestly speaking, there is no Russian philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .204 II. Я гедонист, а не нарциссист! . .I am a hedonist, but not a Narcissist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214 Руднев В. Гипотеза множественности психических миров .The hypothesis of the plurality of psychic worlds . . . .234 Рыклин М. Произведение философии в эпоху «суверенной демократии» . . .The production of philosophy in an epoch of ”sovereign democracy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246 Савчук В. Геометафизика, или Топологическая рефлексия . Geometaphysics, or Topological reflection . . . 266 Секацкий А. Прикладная метафизика . . .Exemplary metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .283 Семёнова С. Борьба со смертобожничеством . . .The struggle with the death of the divinity . . . . . . . . . . . . .292 Смирнова Е. Логическая семантика и вопросы обоснования логических систем . . Logical semantics and the issues of founding logical systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309 Солодухо Н. Теория «философии небытия» . . The theory of ”logical non-being”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .320 Сосланд А. Философия сквозь призму аттрактив_анализа . .Philosophy through the prism of attractives of analysis . .?? .327 Фомин О. Русский поиск философского камня . .Russian search of a philosophical stone . . . ?. . . . . . . . .340 Эпштейн М. Умножение сущностей . . . The multiplication of realities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .346 ФИЛОСОФСКИЕ МАНИФЕСТЫ PHILOSOPHICAL MANIFESTOES Гачев Г. Философская исповесть (самопредставление) . Philosophical confession, a self-presentation ?. . . . . . .362 Гиренок Ф. Философия — это наше уже_сознание Philosophy – that is our conscience ?. . . . . . . . . . . .385 Дугин А. Короткий путь к абсолютному знанию . A shortcut to absolute knowledge. . . . . . . . . . .402 Крылов К. Проба пера: философия после приватизации . . .An attempt of peer?? Philosophy after privatisation . . .423 Кузнецов В. «Концептуальный переводчик»: подступы к программе . . . . A conceptual translator: steps to a programme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .429 Мамлеев Ю. Судьба Бытия и Последняя Доктрина (автоинтервью) . .The fate of Being and the Last Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .449 Матвейчев О. Страна господ . . .The country of Lords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .464 Нилогов А. Философия антиязыка . . . .Philosophy of anti-lanugage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .489 Пригов Д. Зоны выживания в культуре . . . . The zones of experience in culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .504 Романов В. Об устроении человека (в жанре исповеди научного работника, находящего утешение в методологии) . On the construction of Man.( In the genre of a confession of a research worker, who finds consolation in methodology) 515 Солодухо Н. Понимание онтологического статуса небытия . The understanding of the ontological status of non-being. .547 Сосланд А. Аттрактив_анализ . . . .The attractions ?? of analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .553 Эпштейн М. Личный код: опыт самоописания . . . . Personal code: the experience of self-description. . . . . . . . .560

Eastern Europe and continental

philosophy - a geophilosophical report

Södertörn university college

Eastern Europe and continental

philosophy - a geophilosophical report

1Introduction3

The form of the report – an essay3

The terms4

Continental4

“Eastern Europe”5

Some overriding preliminary observations7

The religious dimension11

The Fall of the Wall and the Force of Thought – an idealistic suggestion and a bad conscience12

2On the background of institutional changes14

3.“Continental” currents in the East European philosophical landscapes16

Belarus16

The structure17

Russia19

Structure19

The St Petersburg Days of philosophy 201120

Inauguration session of the St Petersburg Days of philosophy23

“Continental philosophy” at the 2011 St Petersburg Days.24

2012 -2013 St Petersburg Days of philosophy27

Poland29

Poland’s philosophical background. The Lwów-Warsaw School and the Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski29

Continental philosophy in Poland today32

Philosophical anthropology and political philosophy33

Continental and Neo-Scholastic philosophy in Poland today36

Barbara Skarga38

A mediatic dissenter40

Twardowski’s heritage41

Continental philosophy at the IX Congress of Polish philosophy, September 201243

Poland as a philosophical territory…46

4.Some comparative observations47

5.Conclusions and suggestions49

Further studies49

A structure of exchange49

Research group51

International conference51

6.List of persons52

7.Literature54

7.1Surveys54

7.2Some selected works54

7.3Periodicals55

Annexes56

1 List of seminars, sections etc.of St Petersburg Days of philosophy November 17-19, 2011.56

ANNEX 260

IX Polish congress of philosophy September 17-21, 2012 in Wisła60

Agenda60

Special symposia61

Thematic sections61

ANNEX 362

Programme of St Petersburg Days of Philosophy Nov 201262

ANNEX 462

1Introduction

The remit of the project presented here was formulated as investigating the role of continental philosophy in Eastern European countries. This remit may raise questions, although it is rather clear to people working in academic philosophical research and gives an indication of its subject. Nevertheless a discussion of the terms is justified, and this may also serve a purpose in the presentation of the project.

The form of the report – an essay

The text submitted here is what is mostly, notably in contemporary French tradition, called an “essai”. Among recent major philosophical texts Sartre’s major work L’Être et le Néant carries this label.

But also English philosophical discourse uses the term – for example John Locke in his principal work on Human understanding.

The use of the term indicates an ambition of modesty, in respect of the text not complying with rigid constraints of references for background proposals, supporting each mention of a particular author by quotations from specific works etc., but rather allowing for references to commonly accepted understandings of a cited author or school of thought. This may include generalisations and controversial classifications, but also gives leeway for more exploratory and tentative suggestions, pointing towards further investigation and also seeking release from routine ways of reflection.

After all, the term means “attempt”, as distinct from a pretention for a completed reflection. An essay aims to stir up a debate, to be part of a continuous exchange of views or controversy, be it a non-scholarly text in a book, an article in the press or literary periodicals. This often implies that the author takes the liberty of trusting that the background of the story is checked and therefore aspires at some degree of confidence from the reader or listener.

This report has three main sources.

• Material retrieved from the Internet and literature collected in the course of the two years of the project.

•Material from two major philosophical congresses, viz. in St Petersburg, November 2011 and in Wisła, Poland, September 2012.

•Interviews with philosophers in Poland June 2012.

These sources obviously could not more than provide indications of a general picture of the situation in the countries treated. The text, far from aiming at a complete or penetrating account, could, however, hopefully incite to further work and raise curiosity.

The report as a whole reflects my own background and research interests, in philosophy, but also in social and political aspects of communication and culture.

The terms

Continental

The customary philosophical classification since some decades, in particular from the point of view of Anglo-American discourse and traditions, takes the distinction of “continental” and “analytical” philosophy as a watershed. The terms may be regarded as superficial and even nonsensical, since, of course, North America is a continent, and the label “continental” mostly refers to philosophical production in Germany and France, and more precisely to some particular tendencies, styles and traditions in those countries. In the context of this report the term may have a particularly doubtful sounding, since it treats areas of the same European continent as Germany and France. Furthermore the same continent saw the birth of many, if not the majority, of the prominent philosophical authors who dominated the philosophical “analytical” scene of North America, and Britain: Carnap, Popper, Neurath, Wittgenstein, Hempel, Feigl, to mention just a few, and their disciples or followers . On the other hand, the French positivist tradition, from Compte over to sociological giants as Durkheim and a natural-scientific oriented tradition in philosophy of a rather specific kind, in for example Bachelard, Cavaillès, Granger and Canguilhem is rather different from what is customarily, in the English-speaking philosophical world, associated to “continental” philosophy.

Likewise, the “Austrian” philosophical tradition, from for example Brentano, Meinong, and Twardowski (the father of Polish philosophy!) are often qualified as closer to the English-language philosophy, than the currants today labelled “continental” philosophy.

One simple way of avoiding controversies of the “geographical” kind might be by defining the term, enumerating the schools or currents intended to be covered by it. The Södertörn University College web site introduction to the discipline of philosophy, within the research programme on Critical Cultural Theory, uses this approach: “critical theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, genealogy, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, philosophy of language, and postcolonial criticism” are said to be often assembled under the label of “continental philosophy”.

Common usage in English-speaking philosophical discourse has developed, so as to take a dichotomy between the two philosophical traditions with its roots in the early 20th C for a reasonably good description of what has been going on in Western philosophy. This demarcation line, manifests itself in the academic scholarly community, for example, in appointments, research funding, trends in peer-reviewed journals, conference themes etc. So there is both a kind of sociological and thematic justification of the term, despite the objections raised from many scholars, such as those represented in the Skarga seminar accounted for below, against it. The objections themselves deserve, as pointed out, a study, since they often disclose philosophical positions, taking sides, favouring persons etc.

The relevance of geographical considerations rests upon the circumstance that, in much of philosophical discourse, the notion of philosophy, and the methodology accepted by diverse scholars, institutions and funding agencies, are interrelated by a complex network of relationships, animosities, friendships, which would in many other scholarly fields be regarded as alien to the nucleus of scientific (in a broad sense, wissenschaftliche Arbeit) endeavour. Philosophy is notorious both for its extreme historical dependence, and for its “narcissism”, by which the notion of the field itself is placed at the centre of its attention, and becomes a subject of intense debate, sweeping condemnations or scornful rejection. The substance of the field is again and again reformulated and previous work sometimes wholesale rejected under this or that motivation: “metaphysics”, “Seinsvergessenheit”, “nonsense”, “superficial technical criticism of language (Sprachkritik)” , “naïve attitude”. Frequently geographical references are made, mostly to Greece (e.g. by Nietzsche and Heidegger) but also to Europe (Husserl). Neighbouring disciplines to philosophy, like sociology or psychology, have similar rather vehement discussions, though rarely the field itself constitutes such a central occupation and the term denoting the field is linked to such both solemn and engaged dispute. In philosophy this or that attitude to the field is denounced as invalidating the entire field of research and/or making serious research impossible… (Examples are found in the Swedish Uppsala philosophy, Oxford linguistic philosophy, in authors like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Rorty, Badiou…, Schlick, Carnap,… Husserl?, ). “What is philosophy” is a recurrent title of philosophical books (e.g. Deleuze-Guattari) . The demarcation between the two lines of research examined here is a fragment of this more or less constant, more or less esoteric, debate of philosophy with itself.

As will be noted below, this kind of debate was rather lively at least in Poland, and, albeit in a rather much complex manner, in Russia, and, it is likely also in other countries of the region to be studied.

“Eastern Europe”

Eastern Europe is not an uncontroversial notion: actually the idea that Eastern Europe is a backyard of Western Europe or the “Western World” is presupposed by discourse in both daily expressions, journalism and scholarly patterns of presentation. This applies to not only customary thinking in the “West” but also to much of the self-presentation and self-images in those parts of Europe referred to by the term. This is of course a background to why the notion of “Eastern and Central Europe” tends to be the polite and official denomination of the earlier Soviet-controlled part of Europe. “Central” would thereby connote a more pleasant and important position than “Eastern” it seems, not least in “Occidentalist” discourse.

This kind of, admittedly vague and non-corroborated, attitude varies, and is likely to be linked to the political situation of respective countries. The adherence to the European Union “Westernizes” to some extent the state concerned, but the usage of the notion of “Western” both in, for example, Russian and Polish discourse is too obvious and frequent not to be noted.

This, linguistic and discursive, property is not just a matter of presentation and depicting, and self-image, but it is, I would argue, also a matter of “deep structure” in the close to Chomskian or Freudian, sense, that is, a structure “underlying” much “surface” formulae, patterns of description and understanding, as well as political, and scholarly, communication. In quasi-psychological terms one might venture to refer to a “complex” underlying much of communicative intercourse. In that respect the notion of “Eastern Europe” may parallel post-colonial controversies and debates, albeit in a complex manner, since “Eastern Europe” was never a direct Western colonial sphere.

Actually some of these considerations were rather lively in debates of political philosophy in the inter-war period –authors like Koneczny and the linguist Trubeckoj (working with Roman Jakobson) proposed ideas close to more recent conservative ideologues like Toynbee, or Huntingdon in the post-war period. Such reflections are quite present in the current Russian philosophico-theological-political debates (Gumilyov, “Eurasianism”) and other ambitions of trying to propose national peculiarities in philosophy. They are, in that sense, part of the very rationale behind the present report – that is to investigate features of the interplay between “continental” philosophy in the customary “Western-biased” usage and their role in “Eastern Europe”. But they are also quite notable as part of the substance of what is going on in philosophical work in Russia, in particular, less in Poland and other countries – but this remains to be examined.

The background to the heading of this report should also be linked to its mode of financing. When the Swedish system of salaried workers funds (Löntagarfonder) were dismantled by the Centre-Right Government, succeeding the Social Democrats in 1991, the general approach was to transfer the considerable funds collected, to public trust foundations. One of these was the Baltic Foundation, the remit of which was to support research on the region of the Baltic and the earlier Member States of the Council for Mutual Cooperation (SEV in Russian) or the Warsaw Pact, that is, the states dominated by Soviet Union and governed by regimes installed by that state, or in crude terms, “satellite states”. This means that the area of the European part of the earlier Soviet Union, as well as the states from Poland in the North to Bulgaria in the South are covered by the foundation, although not at all many of them are adjacent to the Baltic Sea.

Some overriding preliminary observations

As indicated above, there is a kind of “post-colonial” dimension to the project. This dimension is also combined with a kind of “anachronistic” consideration, in the following way.

History, in the sense of the narrative of the past, has a peculiar capriciousness in “selecting” those events, processes, persons and areas or social structures to be included in “wie es eigentlich gewesen” , as Ranke formulated his ambition. Contemporary approaches to historical theory often include the concept of “negotiation” to describe this kind of selective process in writing or telling what has passed. This includes not only traditional social, political, economic or cultural aspects of history, but notably also scholarly dimensions. In philosophy there is, in the Western tradition, a rather well established canon of presenting schools, persons, authors and currents – canons mostly followed rather rigidly in academic or other studies of philosophy. And since the history of the discipline is a more basic ingredient in philosophy than in other scholarly fields, canons of selection acquire fundamental significance, in comparison to other fields of knowledge. Although the requirement to integrate the history of philosophy in contemporary research is contested by some authors (mostly of an “analytical” shade), there could be no doubt that the history of the subject is more prevalent than in other academic disciplines, including history itself. This chronological aspect of the philosophical discipline is also more liable to be combined with a geographical/spatial parameter. This underlies recurrent reminders of the need to examine “exotic” philosophical spheres (“Oriental”, etc.), but also “minor” achievements, looking from the point of view of the acknowledged “greatness” of a particular author. Language plays a crucial role for selectivity but also more general cultural domination structures.

When a particular language has dominated philosophical texts - in the West, Greek, Latin, French, German, English - the geographical dimension is not always noted but is strong. A language may keep a status as “international” or “lingua franca”, long after the dominance of a political entity has disappeared, thus bringing this direct geographical aspect into oblivion. In the present period of time when English is becoming, in the natural and social sciences and in technology, a next to compulsory vehicle of communication in scholarly contexts, the areas and cultural spheres where this language is less mastered, automatically become marginalised. This prevails despite the quantitative relations of speakers – English is, in Europe, a very small vernacular of the population, actually only the third language, after Russian and German, and more or less of the same size as French (60-70 million native speakers). The position of that language is of course a result of the British Empire and its colonies in all parts of the world, notably North America.

In the particular case of this study, speakers of the most spoken language of Europe, viz. Russian, have to face this situation. Not only is Russian the mother tongue of at least 160 million people, but it is also the ordinary scholarly means of communication to some additional 50-60 million Ukrainians, Kazachs, Belarusians, Uzbeks, etc., in varying degrees.

Polish is another major language in Europe, but, since most Polish academics do not master sufficiently a foreign language to publish in that language, an analogous situation prevails there. For speakers of smaller languages like Bulgarian, Czech, Serbo-Croato-Bosnian, Rumanian, Slovak, Slovenian or Hungarian (just like Swedish…) the situation is paradoxically slightly different, since academic traditions usually incorporate a working knowledge of a major Western language, earlier French or German, nowadays English.

This situation should inspire some care and modesty as far as the entire approach of the current report. Still, relativism should not be taken to far – somehow recognition of the “absolute” value of this or that philosophical writer, just as in other scholarly fields, is a presupposition to most serious work. Nevertheless one has to bear in mind the lack of an incontestable fundamentum inconcussum of this absolute value.

A case from the history of European philosophy might illustrate this aspect.

Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906) was the unrivalled bestseller in philosophy during some decades at the end of the 19th C in Germany, but also read and discussed outside this scholarly and cultural centre of Europe (the World?). Who remembers this very productive and admired philosopher today? Von Hartmann was actually outrivalled by Nietzsche, who rose to immense popularity some time in the middle of his career – and who is the one remembered today. Von Hartmann in a review of Nietzsche actually suggested that he did not add very much to the “nihilistic” philosopher and political activist, Max Stirner whose book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, published in 1845, was an earlier best-seller, and has more or less remained a cult in anarchistic theory.

Von Hartmann’s judgement was not entirely misleading, but the philosophical and cultural market, and therefore also history, was taken over by Nietzsche, not von Hartmann. Still he had a considerable influence on, and was admired by, the founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner, whose movement, still, is quite important in many sectors of society and in many countries, though not in philosophy in the academic sense.

This geo-historical lesson might today tell us that the immense richness of English-speaking philosophical production in North America and other Anglophone countries, will produce hundreds of “Von Hartmanns”, writing not bad books and articles, etc. but never becoming “great” philosophers. They will be teachers or researchers, making their contributions, sometimes acknowledged by other teachers and researchers, but never giving them a reputation of a “world class”.

Trivial as these observations of “dimensions” might seem, they should inspire some tolerance and openness for scholar xxx or “unknown territories” of philosophy, notably when the task is defined as, precisely in this report, examining the reception of a particular tradition, ‘continental’ (not ‘analytic’ or ‘oriental’..) philosophy in a part of our continent. In no way this should be taken as a plea for indifference to the traffic of philosophy (or any other field of knowledge). Rather it may be taken as an invitation not to take systems of status or prestige as excluding high levels of innovative, creative, or just good, thinking in general, in less known geographical or cultural spheres.

“Continental” and East European

Another geo-philosophical complication in the talk about philosophical communication in Europe is the reverse direction: Nobody who studies French contemporary philosophy can avoid the name of Kojève – (Алекса́ндр Влади́мирович Коже́вников), a Russian who lived for most of his life in Paris and who introduced Hegel to a whole generation of French philosophers in his lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit in the 1930s in Paris.

Equally, those interested in “Continental” philosophy, though of a rather less ”idealistic” vein, do not escape the name of the, less widely known, but very significant personality of Alexandre Koyré (Александр Владимирович Койранский), who participated in Husserl’s seminars and later also cooperated with Kojève in the 1930s. Koyré started his academic career on studies in a field close to the religious sphere , but had a significant impact on the studies of history of science; Thomas Kuhn cites Koyré as having influenced his writings on the structure of scientific revolutions. So just as ”analytic” philosophy is highly dependent on philosophers from the European continent, like Carnap, Neurath, Popper, Tarski, etc., ”continental” philosophers are highly indebted to the Eastern part of Europe, for example Russia and Poland.

The influx of Russian exiled philosophers, chased away by Lenin in 1922 on the ”philosophical ship”, or who emigrated at about the same time, had also a decisive influence on the trends of thought in Western Europe, notably France. Berdyaev, Šestov, Semyon Frank, all might be said to anticipate ”existentialist” philosophy, together with the influence of the great Russian novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoyevskij, a tradition of philosophy - rejecting the ”scientific” or Enlightened philosophy of much of Western European traditions. Of course trends of ”life philosophy”, from the Romantics to Nietzsche and Bergson do coincide with these tendencies in Eastern Europe. This background to contemporary Western philosophy, whether ”analytic” or ”continental”, should be taken into account, whenever those, rather crude, labels are being used. Streams of thought run in both directions.

Another case of “philosophical geography” is Søren Kierkegaard . While Kierkegaard himself followed lectures by Schelling in Berlin and spent some time in the then cultural capital of Europe, his publications (financed, in Danish, by his own funds) were only translated into German about 50 years after his death, viz. in the beginning of the 20th C. Nietzsche only knew about his work from a book in German by the Danish scholar and critic Georg Brandes in 1879, but Kierkegaard’s own texts were translated only after Nietzsche’s illness and death. Kierkegaard’s philosophy, in general regarded as a “predecessor of existentialism”, is, however, strikingly close to the “spirit” of the greatest expressions of Russian thought in literature (Dostoevskij) or, later, in religious-philosophical areas (Šestov, for example), although Kierkegaard’s own works for long were inaccessible to a larger public than the Scandinavian one. Nietzsche is also known for having been greatly impressed by the Russian rather unknown philosopher Afrikan Spir (or Špir, 1837-1890), writing in German, generally classified as a Neo-Kantian whose main work was Thought and Reality. The French philosopher Brunschvicg reedited a work, written by Spir in French in 1877, in 1930 – a period which we have noted was a new start of Russian influence on French, i.e. “continental” thought.

Geographically, the Polish Lwów-Warsaw school, emanating from Twardowski, is of course a “continental” tradition, although this tradition is generally regarded as “analytic”. The stream also there goes from East to West, not the opposite way. Alfred Tarski made his doctorate for Twardowski, and Roman Ingarden, the phenomenologist, his habilitation.

The religious dimension

As often remarked, one observation of a ”dimensional” type is the role which religion seems to play in the philosophical lives of the countries under scrutiny here.

Russia in its present period of transformation, and Poland, taking into consideration the role of the Catholic Church in the past in the philosophical structure, both have a closeness to Christian religion in their philosophical structures. Also Jewish philosophy, and traditions, are still to some extent present, albeit more indirectly, since Jewish culture and ethnicity in Eastern Europe has been eradicated, or reduced to the extent that it is difficult to talk about a distinct Jewish culture, at least in comparison to the period before the German crimes in this part of Europe.

It is urgent to observe that some features of religious thought still play a role in those parts of Europe, just as religious motivations for philosophy in general have been present in the history of most current thought, just as the reverse influence. Thus Schleiermacher’s launch of a systematic theory of interpretation, designed for Protestant “pure theology” and a scholarly study of the Bible, was at the origin of hermeneutics in philosophy. It also gave rise to the idea of “dogmatic evolution”, of the greatest (sic!) theorist of Protestant “liberal” theology around 1900, Adolf Harnack, also treated by the recently retired Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger). The latter devoted great efforts to analyse how the original (“revealed” and therefore in some sense infallible) Christian messages of the Gospel and other Holy Scriptures could be laid down in dogmatic texts like those of the Credo of Nicea, as well as later dogmas. The task is to explain how a divine message could be transmitted over centuries, translated, understood, and in some sense still valid.

The understanding of the role of interpretation, and context, was first devoted to the Christian gospel, by Schleiermacher, and later explored by Dilthey and Gadamer, not to speak of more recent authors like Ricoeur, Derrida, Deleuze or Foucault. It should be, I submit, also a constant challenge to philosophical reflection in “analytic” traditions, where interpretation in the cultural or anthropological sense seldom assume a basic role, although the notion of interpretation is technically present in, for example, philosophical semantics and logical model theory.

One main stream of “continental” philosophical thought is thus rooted in the effort to cast a solid foundation for the aspirations of “eternal” messages to be valid, while observing the rigidity of critical scrutiny. But, from an opposite angle, also the “unscientific” trend of Kierkegaard is rooted in a challenge to religious faith, playing a major role also in theologico-philosophical analyses in Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, and Rahner – and other more “existentially” oriented theologians, deeply integrated in philosophical reflections of their time.

The Fall of the Wall and the Force of Thought – an idealistic suggestion and a bad conscience

Media, and European people, talk of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 as the turning point in European transformation. There is a philosophical point, in our particular context, in disputing this discourse, in viewing the Wall-Fall rather as a happening following a less spectacular, even boring, process of negotiations and meetings. Thereby an analogy could be conceived to the somewhat relativistic point above about “great” thinkers, as distinguished from more “normal” philosophers, as an expression of the whims of philosophical geography.

The talk by the Soviet Union Communist party First Secretary Gorbačev in 1986 at a regular summit of Eastern European Communist leaders, leading up to the “Round Table” negotiations and agreement in Poland April 1989 between the Party leaders and the Solidarność trade union leadership, bore no marks of greatness. But still these, immaterial, as it were (far from the knocking down of a concrete wall!) words and meanings were nevertheless the turning points.

The philosophical point may be that a great (or just normal) thinker has a prehistory, in conversation, in learning, in reading – although not the role of the person should thereby be ignored. “Eastern Europe” sometimes plays this role of a silent, non-observed, participant in the great spectacular events, as far as cultural production is concerned.

In some paraphrased significance, an issue of “facticity” and, indeed, an “emancipation from facticity” might be pertinent to these “socio-philosophical” or “geo-philosophical” considerations. It is a question of how philosophers are to be regarded outside their “factual” contexts; that is, corporeal, social, or cultural in the more narrow sense, focussing on the customs and discourses, ways of thinking and expression, in short of their being-in-the-world. The “regard” of other milieus, powerful or even hegemonic collectives is a factor in itself, of “factual” nature. So is also the indirect “regard” related to the other, surrounding, or influential, “regards”. This manifests itself in the self-esteem, or lack of self-esteem by a desire to be integrated into other cultures. Even, employing a pseudo-psychoanalytic lingo, an “inferiority complex” in an attitude of being underdog, less advanced or “primitive”. This was an impression rather frequently, though seldom openly demonstrated, in the implementation of the project presented here.

It is often a factor also in small philosophical milieus like the Scandinavian one where cultural, political or linguistic circumstances differ from the ex-Soviet bloc. It is undeniable that the history of production of Western philosophical thoughts or texts, with some rare exceptions, (Kierkegaard) is scarce in small languages. After the first steps in Greece the academic and extra-muros production of scholarly texts has been in the dominant learned language, Greek, Latin, French, German or English. The fact that Russian is the most wide-spread vernacular in Europe, and also that Polish, with its tradition of using Latin in both clerical and secular contexts for centuries, is also in the top section of a the world’s most used mother-tongues is a reminder of the hegemonic character of cultural production in the philosophical field…

The remit of the project reported here, again, still takes for granted, not at all without justification!, and similarly to other scholarly disciplines, that some philosophers, some philosophical achievements, traditions and milieus are more established, deeper, and simply more advanced than others – and that therefore looking into the reception of “Continental” philosophy in the post-Soviet area is worthwhile. This may be valid as well, looking from the point of view of cultural communication of cultural transmissions, violent or peaceful, be it in areas ranging from fashion, languages, entertainment over to scholarly products or religion.

Projects in cultural studies, ethnographic theory or methodological discussions in anthropology tend to be accompanied by a sense of bad conscience, underlying an approach of tolerance. The presupposition of such disciplines is mostly that the “Other” deserves another approach of study than “ourselves”. As in other meta-scientific contexts, the provisional way out is taken to be aware of this gap of approach, of these presuppositions, as far as possible. This is never absolutely possible, as Foucault taught us. The bad conscience may be embarrassing, but may also serve a good purpose, by challenging facile categorisations and evidences - just as confessions preceded by repentance of sins are considered to be useful and healthy for the soul….

2On the background of institutional changes

Philosophy was in the Soviet-dominated countries an important subject, as part of the ideological education of the population, in all stages and all parts of society. In that sense philosophy played a much greater role in social structure than in other parts of the world. Philosophy and the official doctrine permeating education in all parts of the schooling system, including the universities, was based on ritual reference to the writings of Marx-Engels and Lenin, that is, a parallel to religious education in schools of the Christian, and still, Moslem world. Theoretical aspects were, just as in Christian traditions, Protestant and Catholic, supplemented by ethical and civic education at earlier stages of schools and pre-schools. Those kinds of indoctrination and ethical training, could rightfully be compared to the suffocating domination of Christian religion in the Western traditions in the old European monarchies or in the colonies established in the Americas, although many prefer to forget about it.

Marx-Engels was public or state philosophy, the reading of their texts compulsory and subject to examination at universities. In particular, social sciences and the humanities were completely stamped by this tradition, albeit mostly in a ritual and rather mechanic manner, not engaging either students or teachers personally.

Despite this schematic and arid character of the philosophical elements in the public educational system, it also included basic philosophical education in areas like logic (Russia has a great mathematical tradition since hundreds of years!), epistemology, history of philosophy etc. In this way some philosophical basic “Bildung” persisted throughout the persecutions and cleansing of deviant “idealist” tendencies. Doctrines and teaching formulated in ritual Marxist language dominated also research theses and publications, subject to censorship by the state or public monopoly editing houses. Reverences or at least references to Marx-Engels were necessary for an academic career, also at such a relatively uniquely independent academic institution in the Soviet-dominated sphere as the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, KUL, cf. below)..

More “neutral” parts of philosophy, such as mathematical logic (Kolmogorov, Moscow), semiotic analyses, for example of various parts of cultural production (the Tartu school with Jurij Lotman) , and psychology (Vygotskij) had more leeway and could present results with lasting merit.

Academic exchange, whether of journals, books or persons was hampered economic and political restrictions and by difficulties for travelling abroad, often insurmountable for scholars in the Soviet-dominated countries. Also the influx of scholars from other countries was scarce, more so in politically sensible disciplines as philosophy and the social sciences. Philosophy was, and is still today in many institutions – for example at the Warsaw university and the Polish Academy of Sciences - part of departments including the social sciences. In this way Marx’s old dictum that the task of philosophy should be to change the world might still have some imprint on the institutional framework.

When democratic rule was accepted in the Eastern European states dominated by the Soviet Union, the Union itself dissolved, the independence of its former republics granted, and Russia itself entered a road of democratic reform, profound change took place in all fields of society. The new freedom had a negative counterpoint in a break-down of the public welfare system which undoubtedly was part of the preceding, albeit dictatorial and corrupt, regime.

Economic changes rather drastically changed social structure, in Russia and some of the other ex-Soviet republics by the take-over of public monopolies by “oligarchs” and the establishment of a kind of “savage capitalism”. In Poland “shock therapy” was not as violent as in Russia.

On the level of cultural production, changes were also dramatic: freedom of speech, of the media and the arts, freedom to travel in and out of the country (save for visa restrictions…) revolutionised intellectual and artistic conditions. Though higher education was part of the sweeping changes in terms of the new freedoms acquired the institutional framework was for a large part more or less preserved. Size, position and work of the philosophical institutions were less drastically changed, save for the German systematic dismissal of most East German professors of philosophy. The academic world could gradually adapt to pre-war systems of promotion, publication and teaching and more universally accepted academic routines.

The Eastern bloc states had more or less preserved or introduced rather traditional university structures, with recruitment systems, promotions, academic degrees, examinations etc. not too different from other European states, of course without academic independence. The strong position of the academies of science was one rather strong difference from many states of Europe, as well as in the Americas, but, for example, the French system of research includes a strong centralised research council (CNRS), by and large a parallel to the Soviet system of Academy of Science.

3.“Continental” currents in the East European philosophical landscapes

The project was launched to fill in gaps and supply an overview of the post-Soviet region, but the report presented here includes only material from three countries, one of which is far less covered, viz. Belarus. Still this country presents some interesting aspects since Soviet-like structures have been more preserved there than in other countries of Eastern Europe.

Historical traditions and geographical position will play a different role in a closer study of countries like Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia with their affiliation to the ancient Habsburg, German-speaking, cultural sphere. Romania entertains a certain affiliation to French culture, Bulgaria and Serbia were closer to Russia.

Belarus

Economic structures today are difficult to see through, since the control of the economic activities are in the hands of Lukašenko or his circle, and it is hard to distinguish state structures from more privately controlled property, often in the hands of the ruling group around Lukašenko. The lack of political pluralism and sometimes brutal oppression is also a fundamental factor for academic life. Yet the difference in political freedom, or movement might sometimes be less important as compared to Russia and the Ukraine, not to speak of other ex-Soviet republics. Political murders and disappearances occur both in Russia and the Ukraine, and corruption and power concentration is more or less omnipresent. Opposition media do exist in Belarus, generally its citizens could travel freely abroad, and scholarly exchange – also in the philosophical field - is encouraged.

Belarus was something of a showpiece in the Soviet Union, with higher standards of living and more “Western” appearances than some of the other parts of the USSR. Historically, the territory of contemporary Belarus was part of the multinational Polish-Lithuanian union or “republic of the gentry”, until its destruction 1772-95. The languages of that union were Polish, “Ruthenian” – and Latin, long used in the Parliament, and several denominations were co-existing: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Uniate Byzantines, Protestantism, Judaism.

The structure

The philosophical situation in Belarus might be summarized as follows: The only university institution with philosophy on its programme, after the closure of the private European Humanities university, is the State university of Minsk (BSU).

Some sensitive subjects are exiled, notably to the Vilnius European Humanities University centre for Belarus, a revival of a private university closed down by Lukashenko in 2004. Still it seems to be possible also for scholars in Belarus to travel to that centre without any particular obstructions, and cooperate with it. Its alumni do not seem to have any difficulties of employment in their home-country.

Apart from that the Academy of Sciences has a rather strong department of philosophy and social sciences. Although this is the only scholarly structure, the other institutions of higher education in the country also have compulsory philosophy courses (90 hours) for all students, thus retaining some of the Soviet tradition also in this respect. That means that both technical, pedagogical and commercial institutions have philosophy in their programmes of study.

At the BSU there are two chairs of philosophy, one for philosophy and science, the other for cultural philosophy. There is also a chair for social communication with considerable philosophical content . The “pure” philosophy approach is thus still not implemented in the institutional structure.

The most relevant part of BSU, from a “continental” point of view, is the chair of cultural philosophy, where there is a programme of the ”Belarusian philosophical space” . www.prastora.org (in Belarusian with an English version, ) , by and large a general site for philosophy, including national and foreign higher education connections (among those the Vilnius European Humanitarian University) some events and projects. At this site one finds information (in Belarusian) on the philosophical work in Belarus, including information on persons working in the field in the country. The initiator of the space, Pavel Barkouskij, is also the editor-in-chief of the journal “Topos” (http://topos.ehu.lt/en/journal/) published by the EHU. He teaches at the chair of cultural philosophy in the State University of Minsk, and commutes between the two institutions. The journal receives contributions in English, French, Russian and Belarusian, but the primary language seems to be Russian.

The EHU provides only PhD programmes in philosophy, and specializes in philosophical anthropology, with the journal Topos as a centre of publications. Well-known Western scholars in the “continental” tradition, viz. Bernhard Waldenfels and John Sallis are members of the editorial board of the journal.

One of the collaborators at the Belarusian philosophy space site submitted a PhD thesis, in Russian, on a ”continental” subject: ”Phenomenon and Understanding”, later published as a monograph - theses are not published in general in Belarus. The author also gives courses at BSU in ancient philosophy and hermeneutics, for example.

Another collaborator at the BSU department has worked with a series Visual and Cultural Studies, of the European Humanities University in Vilnius, on the background of scholarly work in the theory and philosophy of communication.

As mentioned, the Academy of Science also has a department of philosophy. The persons employed there have research and administrative tasks, but the remuneration is so low that other occupations are required for a living. The Academy has 30-40 employed in philosophy.

By and large philosophical publications are in Russian, although some translations of classical texts are presented in Belarusian. Russian also dominates teaching.

The only major research event in “Continental” philosophy in later years seems to have been an international seminar on Jan Patočka in 2011 :Jan Patočka and the Idea of Europe: East-Central European Contexts, Minsk, Belarus, April 20-23, 2011. A conference proceedings volume is foreseen.

The, relatively scarce, information obtained indicates that “Continental” currents of philosophy are gaining some ground, but are, as a whole not very dominant. Instead the old generation of philosophers, who obtained their posts, both at the universities and at the Academy of Science, still dominate, mostly as a rather passive and not very creative group of scholars. Marxist terminology is seldom used for labelling views and philosophical currents, although a large share of the older generation of office-holders would still have had to profess their loyalty to that kind of ritual philosophy. This circle seems still to form an influential part of the group of people who have an influence on a public governmental level as fas as appointing new professors and Academy members. All in all, a general picture of stagnation shines through the rather modest information gathered, although one might dare the guess that, if any trend is upcoming, it would rather be an approach to “continental” philosophy. The closeness to the Baltic republics would also speak in favour of this development.

The philosophical milieu of Belarus is rather limited, but some clear needs of additional competence were presented in conversations, such as qualified teaching in ancient philosophy. Also guest lectures of well-known personalities (Žižek was mentioned) in the international arena would be welcomed - but often economic resources are lacking. Of course cooperation through the Baltic foundation would be appreciated, both by way of the EHU and the BSU structures.

Russia

Structure

Russia is Europe’s (and the world’s) largest country, and Russian is by far the first language of the largest number of people in Europe, as well as the common scholarly language of both the Ukraine and Belarus, just as in some of the Central Asian former Soviet republics, although English is gaining ground in the Baltic republics and to some modest extent also in other republics. Emigration of Russian minorities from the Central Asian republics has been considerable, or in some countries complete, after domestic unrests.

The Russian public philosophical infrastructure has remained rather unchanged since the Soviet times. Philosophical institutes exist in most universities, with large numbers of students and teachers. The Russian Academy of Science also, just as in Belarus and Poland, continues to uphold a considerable number of posts in the philosophical field. It is still a huge organisation with thousands of employees and scholars. Its main activity is within the natural and social sciences. The academy has about 55 000 employees, and 500 persons are full members of the Academy.

Its philosophical institute employs 217 persons full-time. The institute has a rather comprehensive catalogue of its activities and provides information on the Internet (http://iph.ras.ru). Some idea of what kind of currents the researchers of the Academy are involved in is given by the list of publications by the Academy. Only one publication demonstrates a clear “Continental” tendency.

The largest universities, in Moscow and St Petersburg, have large philosophical faculties, and also some smaller universities, such as the private European university in St Petersburg and the Humanitarian university in Moscow also include considerable numbers of posts in the philosophical area – usually in common departments with the social sciences.

Two major congresses of philosophy are held regularly: the St Petersburg days of philosophy (annually) and the All-Russian congress of philosophy, the latest one (VI) in Nižnij Novgorod in 2012.

The agendas, talks and papers of these occasions provided some general overview of the diverse currents of thought in Russian philosophy, and therefore also facilitated a method of scanning what is described above as “Continental” trends. Some glimpses of such events are described below from the St Petersburg Days of philosophy in November 2011.

On the other hand, the headings announced for the VI All-Russian Congress in June 2012 did not give many indications associating to a Continental philosophical tradition, although the scope of subjects treated, the number of presentations, and papers, were very large.

The St Petersburg Days of philosophy 2011

The St Petersburg Days of philosophy represent a wide diversity of subjects, depending on the theme of the conference, but more or less give an open space to all philosophical trends in the country. The 2011 conference, in which I participated, was broader in its range of topics than the 2012 occasion.

The organisation of the event followed the traditional kind of scholarly conferences, although matters like volumes of abstracts, lists of participants etc. were not prepared, as in most similar events. But the agenda and diverse sections and presentations of the lectures given were transparent and made it possible for a visitor to choose those parts of the conference which were more likely to attach to the project remit.

A general feature of the entire event was the language: practically all presentations were in Russian, thus providing the impression of an authentic living Russian philosophical language.

The theme of the 2011 St Petersburg Days of Philosophy had an axiological bent: Worlds of values for the contemporary humankind. The outline of content of the sections and the various fields of research were presented in the programme overview several months before the conference itself.

By and large the conference gave an overview of on-going tendencies in Russian philosophical research.

An assessment of the quality of interventions, and therefore also the standard of scholarly achievements must however be rather prudent, both because of the rather radically divergent views on the level of Russian philosophy today expressed by some authors in the philosophical circles of the country, and the modest level of data underlying this report. The most negative view would qualify much of the Russian philosophical structure as simply stagnation, where posts were still held by the old generation of professors from the old regime and the scholarly production of little value. Much of this generation have even been qualified as non-professional “charlatans” by the most outspoken critics. The staff of higher education and research institutions does contain fully qualified scholars, though, according to this critical view, they are rather few. In the St Petersburg universities a joint social science and philosophy department is the institutional structure, and only in Moscow - both the State university and the Academy – there are independent philosophical departments.

An explicit, clear, interest in Continental philosophy is primarily associated to the Moscow Russian State Humanity University (RGGU), rather than to the general Moscow State university. This “Gumanitarnyj universitet”, a successor of earlier institutes of the study of archaeology and other related subjects, is also the seat of the group which has launched a revival of the journal Logos, entirely devoted, from the fall of the Soviet system, to phenomenology and other “continental” trends. The dean of its philosophical faculty is also (2013) the president of the Russian philosophical society (Valerij Gubin). He has written on both phenomenology and Nietzsche and introduced philosophical anthropology. So clearly this is the centre of what might be seen as a systematic connection to “Continental philosophy” in the sense referred to above.

The St Petersburg Days of philosophy in 2011 actually closed by a presentation of this new launch of the journal, and a seminar with lengthy discussions on the subjects to be included in forthcoming issues of the journal demonstrating its links to “Continental” philosophy.

A perhaps superficial, but still significant, testimony of some of the general divisions in Russian philosophical life was the position of one of the scholars of the European (private, post-graduate) university, who described the major part of the intervention headlines at the St Petersburg Days, as unprofessional, or “unphilosophical”. The testimony in itself expresses the position that the major part of the activities in Russian philosophical life are below standards, indeed standards imported from other parts of international philosophical life. The same more or less total rejection of Russian philosophy as a whole could be found in the work referred to below on “who does philosophy in Russia” (by A.I. Piatigorskij)

The programme in itself of the St Petersburg Days, did not actually support this very negative attitude, although some ingredients in the progremme were below the standards of what might be expected. Neither did my attendance at some of the announced, more “Continental”-sounding, seminars corroborate a sweepingly negative judgement.

Some examples below might instead show openings for collaboration and a continued and more systematic communication with Russian philosophical institutions, mostly in the largest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg, but no preconceived positions should exclude contacts with institutions also in the province.

Of course seminars and sessions visited during one week could not give a very complete picture of Russian philosophy today, but combined with the headings of the All-Russian philosophy conference in Nižnij Novgorod, June 2012, a general impression is provided – naturally supplemented by the overviews given by publications in and outside the Web. On this superficial level, in contrast to the very negative assessment referred to above, headings and subjects do not very much differ from similar occasions in other countries, although, as noted, staff changes have been rather slow as from the Soviet era. This has naturally consequences, as far as dynamics and developments of new milieus of research, an “academism” in a negative sense of conserving discourses and structures, and the rather modest level of publications.

On the other hand: some of the very top-ranking philosophers of the Western world also aligned clearly to political power centres – first of them of course Heidegger. In Germany, after the fall of the Nazi regime, the political system in the Western zones did not exclude permanently such personalities, with some rare exceptions. The Soviet East Germany zone and later German Democratic Republic however the changes were drastic: the Nazi-loyal philosophers fled to the Western part and after 1990 the fall of the GDR regime brought about a nearly complete purge of the party/regime-appointed philosophers. This is a striking contrast, and might be considered rather problematic in comparison to the relatively mild treatment of Nazi-loyal State officials in the West. The Polish and Russian post-Communist regimes did not at all follow this German pattern, leaving academic philosophers to keep their posts, for good or bad.

A very ambitious survey of Russian philosophy, both historical and current trends, authors and references equally is provided by the Dictionnaire de la philosophie russe, recently published in French, as a revised translation of a Russian encyclopedia. Reference is given in the Bibliography.

A general overview of what is going on in Russian philosophy today is given in an ambitious collection of essays – the first volume of which (2007) is available in digital form on the Web under the title “Who does philosophy today in Russia? “

The titles of this first volume undoubtedly indicate that a substantial part of the essays included would qualify for the label of, at least, “non-analytic” philosophy, and, if a dichotomy is applied, therefore also fall within the type of currents observed here. Of course, as noted above, much of “non-analytic” philosophy is rather rooted in Russian traditions, often close to the religious and aesthetic spheres than to phenomenology, hermeneutics, German Idealism, French “Post-modernism” or other “continental” currents.

The table of contents with a translation of the titles is annexed to this report.

A look into the shelves of philosophy of the Academy bookshop in St Petersburg also gave an indication of what might be qualified as an interest in “continental” philosophy: for example the works of Gustav Špet have been reedited – Špet was one of the editors of the Russian translation of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, and spent some time in Göttingen with Husserl. Russian was actually the first language into which that work was translated, in 1909.

Also a Russian edition of Nietzsche’s work is under publication.

Inauguration session of the St Petersburg Days of philosophy

The introduction to the Petersburg Days immediately struck a theme that was to a great extent different from the “ordinary” trends of Continental philosophy - the presence of Orthodox priests and some of the themes at the opening ceremony did actually mark a rather divergent tone from most of Western philosophy.

German and French philosophy are in basic respects both secular and secularist, but this opening ceremony, just as Russian philosophy, both the trends of the first after-Revolutionary years, the revived movements after the fall of the Soviet state, and the traditions exiled to Western Europe, not least on the “philosophers’ ship”, (less to the USA) have in many cases a fundamental link to Christian religion, just as many of the most renowned Russian philosophers who managed to establish themselves in Western Europe. Philosophers like Losev, Solovyov, Berdyayev, Frank, Špet (who died in a concentration camp) all share this link to Christian religion.

This should be taken into account in a situation where the Russian Orthodox church actually has regained much of its previous position in Russian society, in close association with the public secular power.

Another theme of this opening ceremony, also recurrent in some of the sessions of the following days, was the frequent reference to Russian national spirit and values – the theme of the Days included the term Values and thereby may have incited this rhetoric - and a vocation for the Russian culture to embody a divergent kind of spirituality than the Western traditions. The particularity of Russia, Russian thought, and Russian values was emphasized too often to be neglected. Another part of this approach was the emphasis of “Eurasian” aspect of Russian values, as mediators between East and West. Criticism in this spirit was launched against Eurocentrism in philosophy and its accompaniment of modernity (by Chrenov, theorist of art). Condemnations both of “marketism philosophy”, post-modernism, scientism were expressed, in the same vein. These kinds of expressions, again, complicate the distinction underlying this report – since “modernity” together with “Eurocentrism” may be taken as imbued in both “Continental” and “analytic” philosophical production, though opposing voices (e.g. Heidegger) may also be contained therein. Husserl’s late work on the Crisis of philosophy may be taken as a testimony of a Eurocentric approach, but also analytic philosophy is mostly associated to “modernism”, Neo-positivism, but also its predecessors in Bertrand Russell, and indeed French philosophical and sociological positivism etc.

The prize awarded, at the end of the opening ceremony, for the best philosophical publication of the year, might inspire some support for the negative judgements referred to above – the title of the work to which the prize was awarded was “The Metaphysics of Celebrations and Feasts” …

xxxxx

“Continental philosophy” at the 2011 St Petersburg Days.

The seminars or sessions, which I had the occasion to attend, did offer a multitude of themes and aspects, but the sessions clearly associating to “continental” subjects were rather few. On the other hand, the other part of the philosophical field, viz. analytic philosophy, had still fewer sessions, according to the programme headings. With one exception - a seminar in French and Russian - all the sessions which I attended were exclusively in Russian, so anyone who aspires to acquaint herself with the Russian philosophical life has to know, or at least understand, the language.

The bilingual seminar took place within the framework of an international conference on “The Other”, being part of the Days, and was introduced by the French clinical psychoanalyst Serge Lesourd,. His theme was about the “calculating” and calculable human being, and generally he touched upon themes close to religious reflection, where he even managed to include reference to the Christian doctrine of Trinity.

Two other interventions at the same sessions also touched religious themes, one about Schelling’s concept of God, linked to the subject of prayer, and analysing the concept of God in German idealism in general (Kryglov), another talk was about the “metaphorical notion of God” (Černoglazov ) , basically being an analysis of Parmigianino’s painting of the conversion of St Paul. He associated to Lacan’s notion of “objet a” as the hidden (metaphorical) Other.

Aleksander Lyžov discussed Jacoby’s concept of the Other as “face” – in Russian “face” and “person” is the same word (litsó). The lecture hall was full, perhaps a testimony of the interest religious aspects of philosophy seem to arouse. Only one objection came from the audience, from a gentleman who in some manner seemed to represent “the old tradition” of a “materialist” kind – though in the form of cognitive science.

Another seminar of the same tendency was part of a series of seminars and research devoted to the philosopher Rožanov (1856 -1919), a thinker little known outside Russia (the respective length of Wikipedia articles in the Russian vs. English versions are rather illustrative in this respect) but very important in Russian culture and thought. Rožanov seems to have been inspired by Swedenborg, and was a very controversial person in his lifetime. His emphasis on sex, and tolerance as to homosexuality, was particularly shocking in his time. He was a clear advocate of the link between philosophy and religion, but refused to integrate into a particular confession.

The relationships between national, religious and literary values was a recurrent theme, apart from during the inauguration session also for a seminar on “Values and a realist world-view”, mostly devoted to great Russian literary figures, such as Bulgakov, Pasternak, Blok, Achmatova etc. The son of Achmatova, Gumilyov (Junior - his father was shot during the revolution for his royalist inclinations) played, in the 1990s, a kind of focal role for the national-religious trend in Russian thought. The seminar concentrated on the comparison between Russian and “European” culture - viewed as some kind of dialectical phenomenon…

Another, clearly “continental” seminar – part of a series of seminars at the St Petersburg faculty - dealt with Scheler and the anthropology of personality. A selection of Scheler texts had just been published in Russian, the leader of the seminar (Doroseev) had also published a book about Scheler, and, furthermore, an anthology with texts on Scheler had also just come out. There is a Russian Scheler society, and a journal, where articles both in Russian and English are accepted. One of the themes of the seminar was the dependence of morality on religion, another intervention treated the relationship between Scheler’s “material theory of value” and Kant’s theory of value.

The interventions at the seminar were solid and there might be reason for further contacts.

One section of media philosophy, which might be of interest to interdisciplinary studies of communication, media and philosophy, was conducted by Marat Zamirovič. One of the papers (by Štajn) dealt with the “desubjectivization” function of “avatars” (that is, basic figures in “Second Life” – an Internet game). In this context it is worthwhile recollecting the Russian scholarly tradition of film analysis (Jurij Lotman in Tartu has been mentioned) . Another paper in the seminar treated McLuhan, linking to Baudrillard’s notion of “simulacrum”.

A seminar on Nietzsche was led by Sadovnikov, who actually gave a long lecture. He discussed Nietzsche’s discussion of Russia as a model for a centralised state – contrasting to the German, just united but very decentralised, Reich. He pointed to the ambiguity of the German term “Macht”, giving two Russian options for translation: either “mošč” – having to do with capacity to act, and “vlast’”, which refers to ruling, endowing perhaps an interesting ambiguity also to Nietzsche’s expression “Wille zur Macht”.

The final seminar of the Days was devoted to the re-launch of the journal “Logos”, a bi-monthly, devoted entirely to “continental” currents of philosophy: phenomenology, hermeneutics, German and French thought etc. , . The journal is financed by a foundation close to the liberal politician Gajdar, and the editing board is in Moscow (mostly the Gumanitarnyj universitet). Klaus Held is on the consulting scholarly board. Some of the editing staff work abroad (Lausanne, Maiatskij, and Bochum, Plotnikov ). About 20 philosophers participated in the discussion, and the assistant editor in chief ( Čubarov) and the secretary of the journal Natalia Artyošenko. The plans for forthcoming issues were discussed. Among the themes were:

•Kittler and post-secular philosophy

•Radicalism in a philosophical sense

•The role of Carl Schmitt

•The City

•The philosophy of economics

•Media philosophy

•The brain

•The “scarce” (“redkost’”)

•Communism

•Oskar Becker

•Pragmatism and phenomenology

In 2010 a very comprehensive issue treated phenomenology in general. Among the subjects was the issue of psychologism, a subject to which I have myself devoted attention. Artyošenko outlined a programme of drawing a map on phenomenological-hermeneutical research in Russia. Such a programme would of course very much simplify further contacts with Russian “continental” philosophy.

The journal is, in itself, a focal point for any attempt to contact and cooperate with Russian philosophy of that kind.

One proposal was launched from the floor (Vlassov, cf. below) to join a weblog to the journal, so as to reach also non-academic circles. ‘’

During the seminar I took the opportunity of presenting the project for which I was attending the conference, as well as suggestions for further contacts with Södertörn University College.

From the Internet it is not quite clear how much of the plans sketched at the seminar have been implemented. At the time of writing (autumn – winter 2013-14), it seems that Logos is published irregularly, 6 issues in 2012 but so far two issues in 2013 – the last issue (No 2(92) 2013), is devoted to “Speculative realism”. Contacts with the editors have so far been without result.

A new journal “Horizon”, published twice a year, explicitly devoted to phenomenological studies, was launched in 2012 by the State University in St Petersburg and its recently founded Centre for phenomenological research and hermeneutics. Three volumes are available in PDF-form 2012-1 and 2, and 2013-1. Its texts are predominantly in Russian, but also a text in English is to be found in Volume no 1 from 2012 (February) . Obviously this centre and the journal merit the attention of any researcher interested in the “continental” philosophy in Russia.

2012 -2013 St Petersburg Days of philosophy

I did not attend the 2012 and 2013 conferences, but the preceding reflections on the ”religious dimension” acquire additional weight, since the entire theme of the 2012 days was precisely ”Religion in the time of science”.

The programme of that conference is available on the Web. http://philosophy.spbu.ru/4071/7726

Also in 2013 Days were organized, this time on the subject of The philosophy of knowledge and creative life. Its programme is found on

http://philosophy.spbu.ru/4071

Poland

Poland’s philosophical background. The Lwów-Warsaw School and the Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski

Poland is more “Western”, in the sense of part of the Roman Catholic sphere - although the larger part of the Polish Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), viz. Lithuania was the last country of Europe to adopt Christian faith - and in the sense of sharing more cultural traditions and exchanges with Western and Northern Europe. This is also frequently emphasized by Polish nationalists, thereby underscoring its difference from the “East” of Europe. Poland’s territory was, until the partitions 1772-1795 by the surrounding empires of Russia, Austria and Prussia, quite different from today, covering much of what is today Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, and the Ukraine. . The same applied to interwar Poland, where nearly half of the population had a non-Polish ethnicity. In this sense Poland was rather similar to the Russian (Soviet) empires, and only after the violent transformations of its territory, cleansing of the German population of the Western parts (Silesia, Prussia and Pomerania), and extermination of the Jewish minority, Poland has a relatively uniform ethnicity.

Polish history is one of culturally diverse traditions, where numerous languages and religious denominations constituted a base for a relatively tolerant and pluralistic community, uncommon in Europe. The “republic of the nobility”, where nobles of all ranks were eligible to the Diet (Sejm), added to this pluralism, rather deviant from the usual European pattern of tyrannical monarchies.

Philosophically speaking Poland was since the Middle Ages part of exchanges the Western parts of Europe. It was more or less intertwined, also before the partitions, with German university sphere – Königsberg once was Polish territory -

although the Polish university structure was far smaller than the rather extensive German network. Still the Cracow Jagiellonian university was one of the oldest in Europe, about the same age as Prague and had both philosophical study courses and some remarkable thinkers.

Philosophy did exist at universities of the Prussian, Russian and Austrian partitions, but was not taught in Polish. Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938), who was appointed professor at the university in the capital of the then Austrian province of Galicia, Lemberg (Lwów, Lvov, Lviv) in 1895 is regarded as the father of Polish modern philosophy He established a philosophical curriculum, gave lectures in most philosophical disciplines and carefully designed study programmes etc.

Twardowski’s influence can hardly be overestimated: the “Lwów-Warsaw school“ dominated the inter-war period and included pioneering logicians as Łukasiewicz, Leśniewski and Tarski. But also phenomenologists came from the circle of Twardowski. His disciples and colleagues were soon occupying most professorial chairs in the newly independent Poland, from 1918.

Twardowski’s own philosophy might be considered as “proto-phenomenological” but his school is generally classified as “analytic”, although some of his disciples were far from the ideological attitudes of logical positivism and followers in the analytic traditions. Twardowski knew Husserl and they had in common their most influential teacher Franz Brentano, and also disciples (Ingarden and Leo Blaustein). Twardowski’s own teaching, though in Polish, could be viewed as part of the German university sphere, with text-books mostly in German. Twardowski himself was born and educated in Vienna, and bilingual.

Though Twardowski might be regarded as one of the founders of “Continental” philosophy his general style was more of the Brentanian, rather rigid, concise and analysing character than the descriptive style of Husserl and later phenomenologists. In that sense, again, the term, as well as the influence of Continental philosophy is anachronistic.

During Soviet domination, the “People’s Republic of Poland”, some emigration also took place from Poland, but the radical purge of traditional philosophy (even killing or shipping out “idealist” philosophers) that took place in Russia never happened in Poland. State-sponsored Marxist philosophy was favoured at universities, and some professors were fired – for example Ingarden. Reverence had to be given to Marx and Marxism in university courses, but all professors did not have to be confessing Marxists. ….The Lwów-Warsaw school could continue most of its activities, now turning to a more outspoken “analytic” tendency, sometimes combined with elements of “materialist” thought. One of the foreground figures of Twardowski’s disciples Kotarbiński even enjoyed a rather privileged status. And there were also some classical orthodox Marxists, who were performing serious philosophical work. The best known of these, Adam Schaff (1913-2006), started his education at Twardowski’s university in Lwów (Lviv), and entered the Communist party already in 1932. He escaped to Russia (Moscow) when the German troops entered the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, continued his studies in Moscow, and returned with the Soviet troops to liberated Poland. He formed part of the regime’s inner-most circle, as a member of the Central committee and teacher at Party schools, until the Anti-Semitic outbreak in 1968, and produced scholarly works in philosophy, in a Marxist tradition, also in German or French. One such intervention was a paper on Sartre, whose close relationship to Marxism is well known – which might be said to constitute one kind of dialogue on “continental” philosophy . Though controversial in much of public opinion after 1989 he upheld his philosophical positions and took part in political debates, as an advocate of “Eurocommunism”. His career, political role but also scholarly work might deserve a study.

It is inevitable to cast a special look, when talking about Polish philosophy in the Soviet-dominated part of Europe, at the Catholic University of Lublin (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, KUL). This university was founded already immediately after the First World War in 1918 – incidentally by one of the heads of the liquidated St Petersburg Academy of studies in theology. It was, as all Polish intellectual institutions, closed during the German terror, many teachers and students were murdered by the Germans, some by the Russians.

After liberation, it was actually the first Polish university starting its activities, already in the autumn 1944. The university was even in the first years developing and could continue its work all through the entire Communist era. Some of the surviving scholars from the Polish universities in Wilno (today Vilnius) and from Lwów – annexed by the Soviet Union in agreement with the Western powers in Yalta and Potsdam – joined the KUL. The university retained a rather strong position despite State repression. Philosophy was a respected and sought for subject of study and research, beside its function of training the Catholic clergy. The Neo-Thomist tradition had from the outset a strong grip on the philosophy department, a tradition which is still dominant, although other traditions, such as phenomenology, also came into research and teaching. Also some of the closed departments in other faculties (physics, etc.) could survive, under cover of specialized subjects in philosophy. Ingarden’s best known disciple was Karol Wojtyła, later pope John Paul II, who for long taught at KUL.

Although Neo-Scholastic philosophy is “continental” in a geographical sense, it could not unambiguously be incorporated into the scope of this project, but as contributing to the climate of reception of continental non-Marxist currents it was probably rather important indirectly.

Marxism, as a “continental” current also offered some openings, in the study of the history of philosophy curricula for the introduction of German idealism, phenomenology, French structuralism, and to a limited degree, Western varieties of studies of the Early Marx, for example those conducted by people like Adam Schaff. It is no wonder that Poland had less resistance than for example Scandinavian philosophical departments to continental philosophy, despite the fact that the surviving inter-war Polish analytic leading representatives of the Lwów-Warsaw school, such as Ajdukiewicz, Czeżowski, Kotarbiński, dominated the scene and continued their academic careers during the Polish People’s Republic.

Kotarbiński’s essay”Treatise on a Good Work” was constantly re-edited, and his “reism” considered to be close to dialectical materialism, although reism was a metaphysical position taken over from Franz Brentano, two generations earlier, and had little to do with materialism in the customary, and still less Marxian, sense.

Some philosophers, for example Kołakowski and the leading scholar and historian of the Lwów-Warsaw school today, Jan Woleński, were active members of the Communist party.

Analytical philosophy was in some respects closer than other currents to the Neo-Thomist movement; the well-known historian of philosophy, Dominican priest I M Bocheński, (teaching in Fribourg, Switzerland) represented this kind of relationship, just as some of the professors of KUL (Stępień, for example, see below tries to combine analytical, Neo-Scholastic and phenomenological elements in his epistemology).

Continental philosophy in Poland today

In order to capture some features of what is termed Continental philosophy in Poland today the approach has been rather “phenomenological”, in the concrete sense of being based on a number of interviews and meetings with Polish philosophers, and with impressions from the 9th Polish national congress of philosophy in Wisła, South Poland, September 2012. A more elaborated overview naturally presupposes knowledge of main publications, both periodical and books etc.

One input was the background sketched above, and notably that Poland has a more continuous acquaintance with phenomenology, a heritage from Ingarden, and also a society of phenomenology, which promotes that approach to philosophy in a general sense. The preceding president of the society was Andrzej Gwiazdowski, working at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Państwowa Akademia Nauk, PAN) in Warsaw, viz. its department of Social Sciences and Philosophy.

Philosophical anthropology and political philosophy

Plessner

A token of the position of phenomenology in academic life might be the seminar on philosophical anthropology, under the auspices of the PAN in Warsaw, devoted to the work of Helmuth Plessner, June 2012 which I could partially attend. Gwiazdowski was one of the organizers of this seminar, entirely held in German and including scholars from Poland, Russia and Germany, as well as one from the US. Plessner’s thoughts seem to have met rather lively interest in Poland – perhaps mainly through the work of Karol Sauerland, a German-Polish social theorist and philosopher, emeritus from Warsaw university

Plessner is not prima facie the primary celebrity of Continental philosophy, but his approaches, as documented in a number of studies presented at the seminar, are related to themes in contemporary Continental philosophy. Thereby the Plessner seminar in Warsaw also served as an entry into the Polish circles of interest in Continental philosophy.

One example of the subjects treated at the seminar was Plessner’s attempts to sketch a philosophy of biology, as a kind of “materialist” alternative to Kantian and Husserlian transcendental idealism. This approach was also, as a pioneering effort, linked to discussions on animal rights and capacities. His criticism of “social radicalism” might also be relevant, notably in a Post-Soviet context, for a discourse in political philosophy. Plessner’s work on the “limits to community” has been translated into Polish and comes into the political-philosophical discussion, sketched below, on the role of “communism”, concrete in the ex-Soviet sphere, but also a recent theme brought up by Agamben, Žižek, Rancière, Badiou and other contemporary thinkers of a “post-modern” brand.

The participation of Polish philosophers in the seminar also included several persons playing an important role precisely for Continental trends at Warsaw University and the Academy of Science. In the latter institution Continental trends seem to have a rather solid base, not least as a result of the role of Barbara Skarga and her heritage (cf below). Actually the (then) dean of the Faculty of Sociology and Philosophy of the university (Stanislaw Czerniak), participating at the Plessner seminar, could be classified among the continental philosophy group.

Significantly, the competition between philosophical traditions had just taken the form of a rivalry in the election of Czerniak’s successor for the dean of the faculty, where the Continental tradition had been defeated by an “analytic” philosopher.

Since the seminar included also Mikhail Khorkov from Moscow as a participant, also a small link to the Russian “Continental philosophy”-scene was manifested.

A volume with the proceedings of the seminar is foreseen, but has not, at the time of writing, been announced on the site of the Plessner society.

Political philosophy - Communism

Political philosophy occupies much attention in contemporary Continental philosophy in general – and the specific experiences of the ex-Communist countries may give a particular shade to this interest. At PAN a research programme and series of seminars on the theme of public discourse on communism is conducted by its section of literature. This project necessarily confronts rather sensitive subjects –notably since the government and public opinion in Poland has grown increasingly aggressive towards anything associated with the previous era. The group of researchers in the centre associate clearly to leading philosophers in the “post-modern” vein – (again: Žižek, Badiou, Rancière, Zygmunt Bauman etc.). One seminar in the series (June 11, 2012) focussed on Anti-Semitic aspects involved in the current disputes in Poland – one aspect of which was the return of some surviving Jewish communists with the Soviet army after liberation from German occupation, and taking leading positions in the new People’s Republic, also in its security services.

This aspect is important to take into account when discussing the involvement of the rather rare Jewish personalities in Polish public and philosophical discourse, for example (cf. below) Woleński and Hartman). Adam Michnik, the leading media owner and liberal foreground figure, since the democratic turn in 1990, is of Jewish origin, just as Bauman. The latter was a leading figure in the Communist party, before his emigration partly because of the Anti-Semitic wave in, still Communist, Poland, 1968-70. While Michnik suggested that “Communism is rooted in a fear of liberty”, Bauman is known for his suggestion that the Nazi concentration and extermination camps were a logical consequence of Liberal Modernist social structure. One of the themes at the seminar in June focussed precisely on the discourse (myth) of a “foreign people” coming in and taking over in Poland (and the other East European Soviet-controlled states). This is a theme reminiscent of pre-war discourse on the conflict of civilisations (the Polish historian Koneczny, but also theories of the Russian linguist Trubeckoy), just as more recent themes (Huntingdon).

There is a link to more articulate political philosophical theory, but just as in Russia reflection is tightly linked to current political combat and public debate. In Poland, perhaps significantly, one centre of political Left-wing discussion is a café-bookshop right opposite the Academy of Science at the main street of Warsaw (Nowy Świat) and next to the Department of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. The PAN seminar focussed at the feasibility of sorting the kinds of contemporary discourses on Communism, in public debates in Poland.

One way suggested was a classification according to diverse myths, that is, a combination of a literary and anthropological approach, linking to Ernst Cassirer’s cultural philosophy of the 1920s, and perhaps also to more recent sociological themes by for example Bourdieu. In current Polish political discourse one might observe rehabilitation of inter-war fascist trends. The complex pattern, whereby the fascist leader of the inter-war period Sergiusz Piasecki was taken aboard by the Communist regime for the purpose of dividing the Catholic citizens may be an ingredient in this process. Piasecki was given the task of creating and leading the regime-supported “Pax” movement, Catholic by confession but loyal to the regime.

Some publications are foreseen on the theme, but seem not to have appeared as yet.

Kolakowski

Another occasion of looking into the political-philosophical area as overlapping with everyday political disputes was given by a later PAN seminar in the programme of research on the heritage of Leszek Kołakowski, no doubt the best-known Polish philosopher in the post-war period. The seminar was organized by PAN, but took place in the premises of the Jewish research institute, adjacent to the rebuilt main Synagogue of Warsaw, actually in the area of the Warsaw ghetto during the German terror and extermination regime.

Various aspects of Kołakowski’s production were highlighted – in his Marxist period and afterwards, notably after his emigration in 1968, when he took farewell of Marxism as such – approaching religious themes, not least inspired by studies of Medieval philosophy. Kołakowski’s earlier – rather close to the Communist regime – position was, according to one participant in the seminar rather an indication of his aversion to the pre-war Catholic “Falanga” (led by the above cited Piasecki) trends than a genuine association to Marx and Marxism. One of the participants in Kolakowski’s seminars (rather monologous lectures, he thought) emphasized his view on the post-war philosophy as a period of activism, following the break-down of rationalism of the 1930s. “After Husserl, Berdiaiev, Brzozowski, Spengler, Witkacy, Marxism was a rather pragmatic choice. Adam Schaff and Krajewski seemed to have fixed everything, they had a clear language. Kołakowski wore a mask, but his engagement was authentic”.

One participant in the seminar, Andrzej Leder, also gave some institutional reflexions on the situation of Continental philosophy in Poland. He gave a very positive appreciation of the research environment of the Academy, which has its own PhD programme, receiving around 15 new students per year, some of them from neighbouring countries of the old Soviet domination area. He wanted to highlight some researchers and milieus particularly interested in Continental philosophy: Szymon Wróbel of the Academy, working on Foucault, Spinoza and Hobbes, Banasiak and Pieniazek in Łódz, as well as a group in Wrocław.

Continental and Neo-Scholastic philosophy in Poland today

One of the nestors of Neo-Scholastic philosophy in Poland is Antoni Stępień, professor emeritus of KUL in epistemology, and a scholar who strived to integrate some aspects of phenomenology into his own, primarily Neo-Thomist, approach. In this respect his aspirations coincided for a great part with those of the future pope Karol Wojtyła, who, as mentioned, taught for long at KUL, after acquiring his doctorate at Kraków for Ingarden.

Stępień provided to me, personally, an overview of his assessment of the current philosophical situation in Poland. Though the approach to the project as such was the influence and reception of “Continental” philosophy, in the rather imprecise sense indicated above, Stępień, naturally enough, focussed on the role of diverse varieties of Neo-Thomist philosophy in contemporary Poland.

Another recent interview has been made with Stępień, published on the site www.Academicon.pl.

But also after the war the project of integrating phenomenology – mostly of a ”realist” Ingarden variety – into this general framework had some representatives in Poland. After Wojtyła , Józef Tischner – Ingarden’s last doctoral student before he was fired by the Communist authorities – represented a similar approach, today continued by scholars such as Stróżewski (cf. below), a venerated figure in the old generation of Polish philosophers, and president of the Polish philosophical society. But also other scholars from the younger generation represent the same approach: Judycki, formerly at KUL, now in Gdańsk, worked with Husserl’s last texts, Wojtysiak, now professor at KUL in epistemology among those.

Neo-Thomism had a strong interest in cosmology and natural philosophy – an interest shared by some of the Twardowski disciples (Izydora Dąmbska).

On the phenomenological side Gierulanka was another pupil of Ingarden – who criticized his theory of painting in the article on Lessing. Other disciples of Ingarden were Władysław Galewicz (in Switzerland) Półtawski, Golaszewska (Aesthetics) and Węgrzecki (the problem of the Other).

Dialogue philosophy had, according to Stępień, few practitioners in Poland, save for Tischner.

The new generation of phenomenologists in Poland, take, in Stępień’s view, a more critical stance to Ingarden.

Existentialism was practically non-existent in Poland, with the exception of the logician Grzegorczyk (cf. below).

In Stępień’s opinion the previous proponents of Marxism had more or less vanished, that is, changed their positions to positivism or eco-philosophy or the like. “Post-modern” thought is, according to him, rather marginal in Poland, rather a literary phenomenon. Heidegger had not been much studied in Poland, albeit to some degree in Warsaw, Cracow and Lublin.

Marxist centres were earlier both Toruń and Poznań, where today there is a certain readiness to receive “post-modern” thought.

Stępień meant that, generally speaking, younger philosophers in Poland tended to interest themselves rather in analytic philosophy – of course falling back to the rather powerful Polish current in the inter-war period, and also for some time after the war.

Barbara Skarga

One Polish scholar, who merits a special interest in a project investigating the role of “continental” philosophy is Barbara Skarga (1919-2009). She was liberated from a Soviet labour camp ten years after the war and could finish a PhD in Warsaw after the liberalisation in 1957, and got a professorship 1988 at the PAN. Her publications were mainly devoted to the philosophy of time and of history, notably Bergson, but also to the positivist traditions. She also treated metaphysical themes, though not from a Catholic standpoint, since she belonged to the Protestant minority in Poland. Her work is considered as representing an opening to “post-modernist” thought in Poland.

A society in her honour – and announcing a prize in her name - had just been founded when a seminar devoted to both her thought and to the general situation of philosophy in Poland held in June 2012. The first prize to be awarded was foreseen for an essay in metaphysics.

The seminar included a lively discussion on the subject of dividing philosophical research and positions along the borderlines of “continental” and “analytic”. A small majority seemed to resist the dichotomy, while for example Andrzej Leder (cited above) defended it as a meaningful broad classification of philosophical interests and problem areas. Both historically and thematically, viz. as a perspective on the relationship between justice and thought there is a justification, apart from historical, for the disputed division he held. Leder emphasized in his intervention and in the discussion the hegemony of nominalism in 20 C philosophy. He also underlined the need for syntheses in philosophical work – and suggested that also syntheses of articles should be permitted as a ground for “habilitation” (second doctoral degree, “docent”) theses in Poland.

The gap between the main currents of philosophy today, was in the discussion suggested to be rather of a discursive nature, not a matter of language or terms.

The above-mentioned Migasiński focussed on the gap between “scientistic” currents, rather hegemonic in Polish philosophy since the Lwów-Warsaw school, on one hand, and the confrontation with thinking rooted in the phenomenological tradition, inspired by Roman Ingarden. Combinations of these two currents are proposed (Francisco Varela), but the gap is nevertheless significant, still.

Poręba (Warsaw) meant that the present situation of philosophy was a situation of choosing between paradigms in Kuhn’s sense, and that it is an important task to engage people in examining the existent “Anglo-Saxon” and “Continental” paradigms respectively. Although the divide is rather a discursive one, it is harmful and leads to a “war of the –isms”. Analytic philosophy tended to take over the institutional framework, by way of its specialised publications – out of touch with the sphere of public space, for example criticism of capitalism, taking positions in cultural matters etc. Also followers of the Frankfurt school, he contended, were integrating much of the discourse of analytic philosophy.

Janusz Ostrowski, (Warsaw), from the steering committee of the Skarga foundation, himself focussing on political philosophy, emphasized the need of a systematic philosophy, à la Hegel and in line with Skargas approach: there is a need for new thinking, not so much focussing on specialized work.

His judgement on the role of Christian (primarily Neo-Scholastic) philosophy in Poland was rather contrary to that Stępien’s, cited above – that is, Christian philosophy is a rather marginal phenomenon in contemporary Poland.

The group around the Skarga Foundation appears to be central for a connection with work on “continental” philosophical themes in Poland. Some of its members (Leder) have already had connections with Södertörn University College.

A mediatic dissenter

A particular case of “synthetic” philosophical work might be represented by the philosopher Jan Hartman, who holds a chair at the medical, not the philosophical, faculty of the Jagiellonian university (Cracow). Hartman, himself trained at KUL, though an active member of the Jewish (Bnai Brith Society) community in Poland, and also a disciple of Woleński (cf. above, equally an active member of the same society) is very active in public debates, He has also been a candidate for the Left party to the Polish parliament. He is active in international contexts and lectures in Tel Aviv, for example.

His survey of the structure of Polish contemporary philosophy contained both administrative-institutional aspects and more content-related points of view.

In his view the flourishing period after installment of democracy and independence from Soviet domination, in the 90s was over. This period had seen around 40 books being published annually and the number of philosophy students was between 10000 and 20 000. The number of students now had gone down to about 6-7000 – partly because state funding of evening ( “zaoczne”) studies had been stopped. Generally speaking, philosophy is in his view in a process of social marginalisation, where scholars tend to work in isolation, taking inspiration from the West, but not from a domestic exchange. Philosophical publications are predominantly in Polish, simply because language skills are not sufficient for writing in other languages.

The number of academic posts in philosophy is still considerable – with 1600 professors (in Cracow only, about 100 posts) of philosophy Poland equals France! The number of “habilitated” philosophers is, however, considerably lower and the total of “professors of human sciences”, (viz. the top title in Polish academia), is just about 100, as far as philosophy is concerned. There are, at present, thus good career opportunities for philosophers in the public sector, even if most academic teachers stop doing research after their PhD. About 50 philosophers have now top ranking posts in universities.

Public servants have life-long contracts, but the salary of an academic teacher is modest – between 5 and 10 000 Zł, (6-1100 €). Usually university posts are not open for competition - incumbents are appointed by heads of departments, faculties etc.

Hartman wanted to cite five philosophers who are well known by the general public:

Magdalena Środa,

Himself

Tadeusz Gadacz (Kraków)

Jacek Hołówla

Jan Woleński

Some academic “cult”-philosophers could also be mentioned: Michał Karkowski, a Polonist in Warsaw, and Angela Bielik-Robson, working in England. Both these are widely read and cited. About 15 other persons are mostly working with commentaries of Western philosophy or cultural critique. (Adam Lipszyc, Szymon Wróbel at PAN, Adam Zalewski in Częstochowa, and himself). Other names he wanted to mention were Jan Gundowicz, Światosław Florian and and Marek Siernek, Hegel specialists.

Books are mostly written for a younger audience - there is however a general lack of an intellectual milieu. There are no generally accepted great personalities in Polish philosophy (comparable to Kołakowski, Ingarden, Tatarkiewicz in the 1950-70s)

In his view, the very concept of philosophy is destroyed, one has to talk about “post-philosophy” , and the divide between analytic and non-analytic philosophy is meaningless. Very few are concentrating on analytical philosophy only (Szubka in Szczecin).

Twardowski’s heritage

One particular aspect of Polish philosophy has already been touched upon several times in this report, viz. the tradition stemming from the “father of modern Polish philosophy”, Kazimierz Twardowski. My own work on his philosophy focusses on its relation to the historical beginnings of modern phenomenology in Edmund Husserl. This approach, as noted, to some extent contradicts the traditional Polish view of Twardowski, focussing at his role of the founder of the Lwów-Warsaw school, a tradition normally associated to formal logic, theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, and generally rather sympathetic to logical positivism, and later analytic philosophy.

On the other hand Twardowski himself – for example in the essay “Pragmatofobia i symbolomania” reacted harshly to some of the attitudes of his disciples. Twardowski, in his own teachings and interest in what was termed (descriptive or “empirical”) psychology. Also after accepting Husserl’s criticism of “psychologism”, he retained informal and descriptive reasoning, not very far from the Husserlian approach, although he took a reserved attitude to Husserl himself and his transcendental approach to phenomenology, after 1907.

I have argued that Twardowski’s own theory of objects of re/presentations was however a likely background to Husserl’s own theory of “bracketing”, central to his “pure” phenomenology, whereby the existence of objects were set aside and the pure description of any object (existing, hallucinatory, illusory, dreamt etc.) was put at the centre of philosophical method.

Actually Twardowski’s general approach to philosophy go well together with the phenomenological tradition as outlined by Husserl, and continued by Ingarden. The latter, as mentioned, never accepted Husserl’s “transcendental” approach, “bracketing” the existence objects. As a whole Twardowski’s influence, maybe together with the Neo/Scholastic tradition, is likely to be one reason for working with philosophies other than the analytic approach.

Therefore the ambitious project of recording in a digitally accessible format, to a general public on the Internet, the entire production of Twardowski and his followers in the Lwów-Warsaw school pursued by the French research council, CNRS, should also be included in a consideration of the reception and development of Continental philosophy in contemporary Poland.

The task of doing this work is entrusted to a Polish philosopher, partly trained at Warsaw University but fulfilling her scholarly career in France, Wioletta Miskiewicz.

Miskiewicz herself, as a scholar specialised in Twardowski’s “overarching” attitude, including both descriptive psychology and a respect for rigid, though informal, logical reasoning, finds it far from meaningless to discuss the gap between diverse philosophical traditions (such as phenomenological and analytic, Continental and Anglo-Saxon). Instead she finds them pertinent to a study of the school initiated by Twardowski.

In some Polish circles – notably expressed by the nestor of the Lwów-Warsaw school Jan Woleński on several occasions – a rather sweeping criticism of “post-modernism” in general has occurred. As noted, Woleński is perhaps the most reputable among philosophers in present-day Poland, playing a major part in research communities, juries and funding institutions. This means, of course, that his influence is, administratively and financially speaking, considerable.

Continental philosophy at the IX Congress of Polish philosophy, September 2012

General assemblies of Polish philosophers have taken place irregularly, but the frequency have increased in later years. Such gatherings reflect tendencies of philosophical research and positions, and offer occasions for gauging the situation of particular trends and schools, such as the “Continental”, traditions.

Starting in 1923 in Twardowski’s city Lwów, and centred around him, there was an interruption between 1936 and 1977, and only in the 21st century a regularity may have been installed.

The 2012 congress in the holiday resort Wisła close to the Czech border gathered more than 600 participants from research sites and universities in the country, in 24 sections and a number of special symposia, panel debates etc.

The material, in a volume of abstracts, gave a reasonably good impression of the positions and trends, submitted in presentations of papers during the assembly.

As a whole Continental trends of philosophy in Poland were broadly represented, but in no way dominant. No particular or dominant adherence to the traditions of the analytic currents – for example connected to the Lwów-Warsaw school - could either be observed. The impression was, similarly to other broad gatherings, one of eclecticism, where many of the presentations are comments to works of other philosophers.

The following notes could not give but a selective glimpse of sessions with attention to themes associated to “continental” trends. A more careful account has to go deeper into the content and discourse of the abstracts submitted – at the time of writing there does not seem to be any proceedings of the entire conference foreseen, as far as available documentation shows.

The presentations and debates were almost exclusively in Polish, which might be a sign of self-esteem, but also to a low level of international exchange.

The solemn opening of the conference was centred on a lecture by the above-mentioned disciple of Ingarden, Władysław Stróżewski, president of the Polish philosophical society, on the theme of przeświadczenie, a term difficult, even for the lecturer, to translate into English or German philosophical terminology. The term is related to “experience”, but also conviction, belief, insight, testimony, but literally means “lightning-through”, which intimates a slightly Heideggerian association. His lecture is in extenso published in the volume of abstracts.

The section on gender philosophy (the heading did not use that term but the ordinary Polish term for “sex”) did start out with some references to current research on feminist theory, Foucault’s and other differentiations of sex/gender. Rather soon more administrative and daily political considerations took over – the controversiality of feminism is considerable in Poland, in many respects, and Magdalena Środa, who conducted the section, has even been next to physically attacked at her home university in Warsaw.

Section 8 on the philosophy of the human being naturally associated to the Plessner seminar referred to above. The section was headed by one of the leading phenomenologists in the country, A. Przyłębski, editor-in-chief of the yearbook of phenomenology in Poland. He emphasized that already Dilthey had undertaken an “anthropological turn” of philosophy, before both Scheler and Plessner. Surprisingly, he devoted little attention to Husserl’s criticism of “anthropologism” – notably against Dilthey – as a form of vicious circle (of which “psychologism” is just a variety). From a Swedish point of view the attention to Cassirer’s later philosophy, worked out in Gothenburg in the 1930s, deserved a special interest. The point in the lecture was to read Dilthey as a kind of advocate for seeing categories as presuppositions rather than empirical “petrefacts”, linking life philosophy with hermeneutics, cultural theory, and biology.

Reference was made to the journal Analiza i egzystencja, mainly edited from Szczecin University, but also with Wojciech Rabinowicz (Lund) and Ariana Betti (Twardowski expert) in the editing board. The journal has mainly an analytical approach, but also transcends the border-line to Continental themes.

The following presentation, by Jaromir Brejdak, also from Szczecin, took up similar themes, comparing Dilthey, Scheler and Plessner, arguing that Dilthey should be regarded as even more phenomenological than the early Husserl… Also Plessner’s notion of consciousness should, according to the speaker, be regarded as “intentional”, differently from Kant.

The section on social and political philosophy had a clearer analytical character, an exception being a study of Hannah Arendt’s works on the relationship between individuals and society.

A panel on philosophy, religion and politics had foreseen the participation of Zygmunt Bauman, who however finally did not turn up. The debate mostly reflected controversies in everyday politics in Poland, where Środa (cf. above) wanted to distinguish between “warm” and “cold” relationships between politics, philosophy and religion. Her main point was to underline the notion of injustice rather than rights in political philosophy. She also recalled John Stuart Mill’s plea for socialism in his later works.

The participant from the Catholic university KUL, (Ks. Prof Jan Bronk, that is, a priest) adopted a “cold” attitude – declaring “his lack of opinions” in general on the subject. Another participant (Szahaj) pointed out that the link between the Catholic Church and the right-wing political camp (as in contemporary Poland) was not self-evident: on the contrary, French philosophical Catholic tradition contained quite different positions (Maritain).

A special symposium on the notion of transcendence was held by the Jan Patočka Phenomenological society. The introduction was by Artur Mordka (Rzeszów) who took aboard diverse notions of transcendence, both religious and secular. He saw Patočka’s adoption of Heidegger’s suspension of the subject-object relation as a kind of transcendence applying the Christian idea of sacrifice – notably the god who resigned from his own divinity.

Another intervention (Zonhar from Brno) treated the relationship between Masaryk and Patočka, on the issue of man as a social being. He pointed out that Masaryk, as a Christian philosopher, had rather little in common with Patočka, whom he saw as a purely secular thinker – perhaps with the exception that “eternity might be a corrective”.

Wojciech Starzyński from PAN is the editor of a considerable correspondence 1957-1973 between Patočka and Irena Krońska in Warsaw (at the time working on a philosophical encyclopedia together with Ajdukiewicz).

The special symposium on “New roads in phenomenology”, was arranged by the Polish phenomenological society, which publishes a quarterly and a yearbook. The above-mentioned Migasiński has been a leading figure in the society. One intervention (Przybylski, Poznań) focussed on the relation between phenomenology and cognitive science (cf. Delescu, above) – with particular attention to Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the body. Merleau-Ponty had in his view ideas that were valuable, but did not have access to a number of Husserl’s manuscripts, now published, nor to the empirical findings of neuroscience and brain research. (Przybylski has spent some time in Copenhagen with Dan Zahavi’s institute).

Other presentations dealt with a relation between Dilthey and Husserl (Plotka, Gdańsk) and Starzyński, (cf above) treated Depraz, phenomenology and eroticism (references to the French philosophers Marion and Henry).

The history of Polish philosophy was a subject of several sections. One treated the presence of the Russian exiled philosopher and theorist of religion Nikolaj Losskij, who participated in the second Polish congress of philosophy under the presidency of Twardowski, in Warsaw 1927. Some interest in a “Slavonic” philosophy was shown in the inter-war period, one conference was held in Lwów, also with the collaboration of Twardowski. Losskij himself represented a philosophy of evolution with a religious ingredient (slightly reminding of Teilhard de Chardin, in the 1950s) .

A panel on the future of philosophy in Poland was introduced by Woleński, who declared himself somewhat melancholic, not least because of the gap between analytic and Continental philosophy, which he saw as a source of conflict and grossly simplified.

Poland as a philosophical territory…

As noted by Hartman above, Poland has preserved the extensive philosophical infrastructure since the Communist regime, where, by and large, the task of philosophy, together with sociology, was to underpin official doctrines.

Poland is in that sense a “big” philosophical territory.

Nevertheless – and with due respect to the very rich variation of positions, scholarly efforts, institutions and production, perceived both at the diverse meetings with Polish philosophers individually and during the Congress – there might be space for some reflection on the judgements expressed by Hartman. Depending on the perspective, similar judgements, however, might be expressed, for diverse periods, on most other milieus of philosophy.

With due reservations, some impressions might be summarized as follows:

•The extensive quantitative infrastructure does not correspond to an equal creative power

•The lack of language competence of Polish university employed staff hampers cooperation with international research, as obviously does the reverse lack of competence in Slavonic languages in “the West”

oTranslations are costly and participation in international meetings difficult

•Paradoxically, these circumstances make Polish philosophy very “continental” in the sense of being devoted mainly to comments on Western theorists

•The official link to Marxism has vanished, but is to some extent replaced by a kind of “normalscientific” lack of independence, with timid connections to other philosophical currents.

•The strong Polish logical tradition survives on the plan of teaching, but innovative achievements seem to be scarce

•The Brentanist tradition from Twardowski does not seem to be a living scholarly movement

•Religion seems to play a considerably smaller role than in contemporary Russian philosophy, despite the rather strong academic position held by the Catholic university in Lublin, being a kind of elite institution in the private sector

oDespite the important position which philosophy still plays in the Catholic training of the clergy, the Catholic tradition does not seem to play a significant role for the reception and development of “Continental” currents of thought.

•Interest in political theory and philosophy is high, and perhaps even flourishing. Political positions are often clearly spelt out, from Stępień’s conservative standpoint to Hartman’s, Środa’s and Woleński’s more leftist positions.

4.Some comparative observations

This report is an explorative exercise and aims first and foremost at promoting an overview – much of the fact material is available in encyclopaedias, not least Wikipedia, where practically all the persons and works referred to are subject to some treatment, in one of the relevant languages – English, German, Russian, Polish.

The remit of the project was first of all a comparative one: to look into the role of what is, in the countries that were under Soviet domination until 1989, with all reservations and prudence, termed Continental philosophy, that is here first and foremost French and German philosophy of the last half-century.

Neither a detailed philosophical discussion nor analysis of themes and proposals enounced, nor an analytic reading of some of the relevant works has been included. In this sense, the report is programmatically superficial, in line with its ambition to be explorative. This should encourage curiosity for scholarly contacts and stimulate studies. It could not be sufficiently underlined that one condition for the improvement of knowledge of philosophical research and development of this half of Europe presupposes a basic knowledge of the most widely used languages in scholarly communication in the countries concerned. English may be the lingua franca of most present day scholarly communication, but production of research publications will for a foreseeable future be pluralistic in the linguistic sense, as will, hopefully, also philosophical perspectives, outlooks, discourses and traditions.

Philosophical communication is, just as other scholarly communication, a reality, and the truly searching attitude, which is a prerequisite for philosophical work, must provide for diversity of discourse. This applies despite the, maybe inherent, pretention of philosophers of having discovered final truths, at least in the sense of having revealed mistakes of earlier products, or proclaiming the superiority of their own new methods… This dialectic, or perhaps unsolvable paradox (aporia), should hurt the self-confidence of the community, and therefore also unfold new insights.

The overall impression, or finding, of the work undertaken has nevertheless been a view of a sphere of intense philosophical activity. Despite the rather critical – certainly not unfounded – judgements of both the Russian, Belarusian, and Polish contemporary philosophical infrastructure, scholarly level and creative production, an observer must admit that the philosophical work is as intense as in other European or American areas.

A comparison of philosophical teaching, education and research work with Western achievements is close to impossible for someone who does not master the languages used in philosophical production in the area – that is, for the overwhelming part the vernacular, not the Western languages. And it might be true that much of scholarly activity in these countries still suffers from the arthritis from the oppressive structure of previous regimes. This is one argument for an extension of contacts and exchange with this half of Europe, which certainly will benefit also those who discover the wealth of ideas and discourses beyond the old Iron curtain.

5.Conclusions and suggestions

Further studies

As suggested above, this report is to be regarded as an encouragement and promotion of further studies, and to the construction of necessary infrastructure for establishing a base for such studies. Rather few concrete suggestions for studies have been included, but the reader will hopefully find some material in the text or in the material associated to the text.

Studying philosophy of other linguistic and cultural domains than one’s own requires a basic familiarity with the respective environment. It is a natural consequence of this project to insist on the urgent reorganisation of a base of Slavonic linguistic competence, and the end of the reduction of university (and high school!) offer of Slavonic languages in Sweden. This is a general immediate requirement, although the demand from students for these languages may not be very developed at present. Södertörn University College has a particular responsibility in this respect, due to its privileged position in enjoying funding from the Baltic foundation.

Just as theologians have to learn the languages of the texts they are studying and analysing, philosophers have to be trained in languages other than the dominant scholarly vehicle of communication, in order to acquire proficiency in reading texts and participate in exchange, benefitting from unexpected innovative contributions, or discarding unimportant aspects in standard literature.

In the course of this project some works and philosophers of the past that might be candidates for further study have been singled out

Kołakowski

Krąpiec

Lotman

Medievists in Lublin

Russian emigrant philosophers: Šestov, Berdiaev, Frank,

Schaff

Skarga

Špet.

Some circles, research centres and journals have also been mentioned, and of course individual researchers should be added to that list. A very provisional list of names is attached to this report.

A structure of exchange

The unique resources put at the disposal of Södertörn University College by the Baltic Foundation should be mobilized to build up an infrastructure of exchange. There is already a certain readiness to acquire publications from Eastern and Central Europe in the Södertörn university library, but this readiness has to be stabilized and supported by a supply of courses and special research facilities for studies in the area concerned. Research is not only projects by qualified researchers into new areas but also presupposes a basis in the infrastructure for pursuing these projects, most importantly language competence. Apart from training in the languages, history and culture of this part of Europe, it is natural to organize a systematic exchange of researchers, and students.

The Nordic networks and institutions of phenomenological studies should, for example, preferably also extend invitations to Eastern European countries.

Also the arrangement of special seminars together with some of the universities in, for example, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania could be envisaged, focussing on some of the particular aspects, on philosophical authors and trends in those countries. It might be the case, that in some contexts, initially, interpretation services have to be included in the organisation plans.

Preferably such seminars should have a long-term perspective, for example one per semester, during five years.

Researchers and master students from Sweden should be encouraged to look into the specific philosophical conditions and traditions of East and Central European countries, supplying travel grants, elementary linguistic training and other resources needed.

Students from groups with roots in cultures and languages in the relevant part of Europe should be specially encouraged to employ their capacities for projects, for example by scholarships, and travel grants linked to their philosophical studies or research.

Some of the circles and research groups mentioned in the report deserve special attention and are likely to be fruitful contacts for research exchange with Södertörn University College, for example

•The Centre for phenomenological and hermeneutic studies in St Petersburg

•Gumanitarnyj universitet in Moscow

•The editorial groups around the journals Logos and Horizon

•The journal Topos in Vilnius and its editors, in Vilnius, Minsk and Warsaw

•The journal Analiza i Egzystencja in Szczecin

•The research groups, associations and centres on phenomenology and on political philosophy (discourse analysis) at PAN in Warsaw

Further contacts might be valuable with the universities in Poznan, Wroclaw and Lodz in Poland.

Research group

The special conditions, cultural, theoretical, and financial, of Södertörn University College, and the remit of the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, might favour a launch of a special research team on the philosophy of Eastern Europe. A focus on the currents that are labelled “continental” is natural, which would imply an interdisciplinary approach on a philosophical basis. That would mean that research on religion, culture, ideas and rhetoric is an ingredient.

A special study on national and religious components in philosophy could be an initial phase of such an approach, bearing in mind the particular attention such themes have gained in Russia, but also traditionally in Poland and other countries.

International conference

One traditional way of launching such a research group and a programme of research on a medium or long term in the academic context would be the organisation of an international conference or seminar, inviting scholars from a number of East and Central European countries. The conference should if possible be prepared by working out some investigative questions, asking participants to submit short accounts on the situation of philosophy of the “continental” brands in their respective academic, and non-academic, milieus and social context.

Such a conference could be organised in a rather near future, profiting from the contacts already established.

It is desirable that the proposed efforts should be regarded as a whole programme, as an opening up for the “Baltic dimension” specifically in philosophy.

6.List of persons

The list below is an unsystematic enumeration of philosophers, dead or alive, mentioned or referred to in the report, or in its context, some of whom have contributed by interviews, presentations or seminars to the material underlying the text. No particular order, not even alphabetical has been attempted.

RUSSIA

Magun

Vlassov

Kolmogorov Vygotskij

Lotman

Špet

Semjon Frank

Losev,

Soloviov

Chrenov

Pocinók

Markov

,Sjevtjenko

Baneyan

Solonin

Gumilyov

Artyošenko

Tjernigovskaja

Gantjev

Šestov

Berdjajev

Serge Lesour

Kryglov

Tjernoglazov

Lyzov

Artamosjkina Rozanov

Dostojevskij

Florenskij

Sadovnikov

Maiatskij

Plotnikov

Anasjvili

Subarov

Aleksandr Pogrebnjak

Zaitsev

Doroseev

Marat Zamirovitj

Štajn

BELARUS

Vjacheslav Stjorn

Barkouski

Sarna

POLAND

Chmielewska

Leder

Stępień

Lipszyc

Mrozik-Gombrowicz,

Tokacki

Wojtyła

Zalewski ,

Grzegorczyk

Zawadzka

Migasiński

Kalinowski

Florian

Żukowski

Wróbel

Krąpiec

Gundowicz

Dąmbska

Baniasiak

Kamiński

Woleński

Gromska

Pieniazek

Ingarden

Szubka

Gierulanka

Judycki

Kłósak

Kaniowski

Półtawski

Gołaszewska

Stróżewski

Wodzinski

Witkowski

Galewicz

Węgrzecki

Wojtysiak

Paczkowska-Łagowska

Znamierowski

Tischner

Bukowski

Brylebski

Koneczny

Jadacki

Hartman

Placek

Skarga

Biednarek

Środa

Hołówka

Ostrowski

Pólręba

Karkowski

Czerniak

Staniszkis

Kotarbński

Haremska

Plotka

Lesniewski

Przyłębski

Urbaniak

Mordka

Lukasiewicz

Brejdak

Bauman

Krońska

Tarski

Godek

Szahaj

Zonhar

Ajdukiewicz

Bankiewicz

Bronk

Starzyński

Przybylski

Miskiewicz

Blaustein

Other countries

UKRAINE :

Vachtanr Kebuladze

Andrei Bogdan

7.Literature

7.1Surveys

Lesourd, Françoise (ed.) (2010). Dictionnaire de la philosophie russe . Lausanne: L’age D’homme.

Krugosvet gives a good web-based survey of Russian philosophy

"Кто сегодня делает философию в России", том 1, 2007 г., http://klex2.ru/4vs

Who does philosophy in Russia today Vol 1

Lourié, Ossip Davidovitch. (1905) La Philosophie Russe: Contemporaine. Faximilutgåva USA ca 2000

Tatarkiewicz, Władysław (1981). Historia Filozofii. Tom 1-3. Warszawa: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe.

Wasik, Wiktor (1958). Historia filozofii polskiej Tom I-II. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczej Pax.

A rather ambitious documentation of the proceedings IX Congress of Polish philosophy is found (in Polish) at the site www.Academicon.pl

7.2Some selected works

(Some lists of published works have been supplied in foot-notes. )

Brzozowski, Stanisław (2008). Mocarz. (play) Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.

Cavallin, Jens (1987). Content and object. Husserl, Twardowski and Psychologism. Phaenomenologica 142. Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Gogacz, Mieczysław. (1985). Człowiek i jego relacje. Materiały do filozofii człowieka. (Neo-Scholastical text-book in philosophical anthropology) Warszawa: Akademia teologii katolickiej (ATK).

Gogacz, Mieczysław (1987). Elementarz metafizyki. Warszawa: ATK.

Hartman, Jan (2010). Polityka filozofii. Eseje. (The politics of philosophy. Essays. Kraków: Universitas.

Jadczak, Ryszard. (1991). Kazimierz Twardowski. Twórca szkoły lwowski-warszawskiej. (K.T. The creator of the Lwów-Warsaw school). Torun: Adam Marszałek.

Hartman, Jan (2011). Wiedza, Byt, Człowiek. Z głównych zagadnień filozoficznych (Knowledge, being, Human, - on the main problems of philosophy.). Kraków: Universitas. (under translation).

Kamiński, Stanisław, ed. (1980). Theory of being to understand reality. Lublin: Towarzystwo naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.

Kusch, Martin. (1995). Psychologism. A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Lotman, Yurij. (1976). Semiotics of Cinema. (Transl. by Mark Suino.) (Michigan Slavic Contributions.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Семиотика кино и проблемы киноэстетики (Russian)

Müller, Jan Werner (2013). Demokratins tidsålder. Göteborg: Daidalos.

Paśniczek, Jacek (Ed.).(1992). Theories of objects: Meinong and Twardowski. Lublin: Uniwersitet Marii Skłodowskiej.

Špet, Gustav (2007). Iskusstvo kak vid znanija. Izbrannye trudy po filosofii kultury. (Art as an kind of knowledge. Selected works on cultural philosophy.)Ed. and Preface by Ščedrina, Tat’jana: Idei Gustava Špeta v kontekste fenomenologičeskoj estetiki. (Gustav Špet’s ideas in a phenomenological aesthetical context). Moskva: Rosspen.

Špet, Gustav (2010). Filosofija i nauka. Lekcionnye kursy. (Philosophy and science. Lectures). Moskva: Rosspen.

Stępień, Antoni. (1966). O metodzie teorii poznania. (On the method of theory of knowledge). (Series Studia z filozofii teoretycznej) Lublin: Towarrzystwo naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.

Twardowski, Kazimierz (1999), On Actions, Products and other Topics in Philosophy. Ed. By Johannes Brandl and Jan Woleński . Atlanta: Rodopi.

Twardowski, Kazimierz. (1894, 1982). Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Wien: K. u. K. Verlagsbuchhandlung.

7.3Periodicals

Analiza i egzystencja. Pismo filozoficzne. Szczecin.

Kryzys. Przewodnik krytiki politycznej. (2009)( A series of publications on political subjects) Warszawa: Wydawnictwo krytyki politycznej.

Logos, filosofsko-literaturnyj Žurnal. #5 78 2010. Fenomenologija segodnja: vzgljad iz Rossii. (Phenomenology today: view from Russia).

Principia: Pisma koncepcyjne z filozofii i socjologii teoretycznej Tom LIV_LV Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński. 2011.

Principia. Ekspres filozoficzny. No 42 2008. Supplement to Principia with surveys of appointments, defences of theses, publications in philosophy in Poland.

Yearbook of phenomenology (Poland)

Znak. 1969 181-182. Rok (year) XXI Mistzrowie naszego czasu (The masters of our time).

Annexes

1 List of seminars, sections etc.of St Petersburg Days of philosophy November 17-19, 2011.

The list follows the official printed conference programme.

In some cases the presenters are mentioned by name, in other seminars the presenters were introduced orally.

Plenary symposia (First day of introduction)

1.The axiology of the Russian constitutionalism: Unity and plurality

2.Spiritual search and corporeal practice in contemporary man

3.Power and values

4.Philosophy and society: awards on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Russian society of philosophy

XIII Annual scholarly inter-university conference: Culture and values

IV International research conference:

Karl Marx, Post-Marxism and dialectics, synergetics, ’globalistics’ in a time of new values

International conferences

♣The sense of life: to find and lose

♣“Bildung” and communication: The value of “the Other”

♣The metaphysics of art: The value of the Classical in art and philosophy

♣Ontological research in the contemporary world: theory, axiology, practice (CANCELLED)

Section of independent philosophy

Philosophy as value of humanity

XXVIII Conference of the Scientific centre of philosophical comparative research and socio-humanistic inquiry

”Worlds of values” in contemporary philosophy: a comparative horizon

All-Russian scientific conference: “Worlds of values” in the cultures of the East

(unlabelled kind of conference)

Values of contemporary man in the light of a realist world view

All-Russian conference

Rationality and existence

Theoretical conference with international participation

Philosophy on Ethos: the theory of value of ethics

XVI annual conference of the discipline of philosophical anthropology

Problems and perspectives in philosophical anthropology: exchange of symbols and difficulties of translation

International research conference: Philosophy of media V

Social problems of media realities: Inequality of media, media violence, freedom of media

All-Russian youth conference (students)

Theoretical and exemplary ethics: tradition and perspectives (42 different papers)

Seminar

The axiology of personality in Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology

Workshops

Scholarly knowledge as a historical-cultural value

V.V Rozanov in the field of diverse value orientations: “Small words and small talks”

The heritage from L.N. Gumiljov: for and against – on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Gumiljov.

Scientific-practical seminar

”Eurasianism” : theory of history, theory of value, ideology

Open seminar -symposium

The analytics of the wallet

Workshop

Truth as value and the problem of truch values in contemporary Russian culture.

Unspecified context

Values on a horizon of risks

Workshop for philosophers and authors in Russia and St Petersburg

The sense of philosophy and literature values: divergences and community

Workshop with international participation

Values and communication in contemporary society

Colloquium

Education of the human being

Workshop

The potential of the “Different” to form “worlds of values”

Workshop

Evaluation and projecting a universe of values in a globalising society

XXVII Nietzsche-seminar

Value, truth, being

Workshop

Journalism in the world of politics: difference and coincidence in values

Research seminar

Logic and deontology: On the occasion of 60 years after the publication of G.H. von Wright’s “Deontic logic”

Workshops

Successful socialisation of personality as a value for contemporary humankind

Renaissance for life values – the transition to highly developed civilizations

International scholarly – practical seminar

The transformation of “value worlds” in contemporary man and drugs

Theoretical seminar

Boundary issues

(mysticism, death …)

Workshop

Values in technology and natural science

Scholarly-practical seminar

Philosophy as a profession

(Unspecified)

The new century: harmony between nature and intellect: values on their way from logocentrism to systemocentrism, cognitive technology, synergy

Workshop

The value horizons of Russian culture

Conference

The philosophy of the history of philosophy: obligation and connection (on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Prof K A Sergeev)

Workshops

The genealogy of values in the philosophy of the Russian “Silver age”

The anthropology of cultural heritage

The journal ”Logos” : Non-institutional forms of professional philosophy in today’s Russia – experiences from 20 years passed and new research tasks

ANNEX 2

IX Polish congress of philosophy September 17-21, 2012 in Wisła

For details on sections, responsible persons, participants, presentations etc. see the conference programme and volume of abstracts. Below is just a summary of the congress agenda and translations of the sections and panels of the congress.

Agenda

17 September

15.00 Opening of the congress:

Main administrator of the congress Alexandra Kuzior,

Vice-Chancellor of the College of Technology in Śląsk (Silesia)

Vice-Chancellor of the Sląsk University

President of the Polish Philosophical Society (PTF) Władysław Stróżewski, Chairman of the Philosophical committee of the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) Piotr Gutowski,

Introductory lecture: W. Stróżewski: ”On experience/convictions ((przeświadczenia) in life and art”

18 Dinner (Kolacja)

20Entertainment

18 September

9-11 Parallel panel discussions

Philosophy and labour market

Philosophy and art

Gender difference as a philosophical problem

Meeting of the editorial board of ”Analiza i Egzystencja”

11.20-13.30 Sections and special symposia

13.30-15 Lunch (Obiad)

15-17 Sections and special symposia

17-18 Special lecture and award of prize, arranged by the journal ”Przegląd Filozoficzny” (Philosophical Survey)

18Dinner

20 Entertainment

19 september

9-11 Panel discussions

Does philosophy need history of philosophy?

Philosophy, politics, religion

“Politicalness” and post-democracy

11-16Book show

11.20-13.30 Sections and symposia

13.30 Obiad

15-18Sections and symposia

18 Kolacja

20Entertainment

21Meetings of the committee of philosophy of PAN and the Polish society of philosophy

20 September

9-11 Panels

Ethics and business

Philosophy and sports

Philosophy in the XXI Centurry

Technology-Philosophy-Society

Sustainable development: Philosophy, ethics, politics

11.20-13.30 Sections etc

13.30Lunch

15-18Sections mm

16Lecture for students: prof Jan Woleński

18.30-19.45Termination of the congress

19.45Banquet with dance

Special symposia

1Man and transcendence: VI meeting of the Phenomenological Patočka society (Fenomenologiska Patočkasällskapet)

2Philosophy on Death

3Contextualism

4New ways for phenomenology

5Varieties of explanation

Thematic sections

1Axiology

2Philosophical didactics

3Ecophiloosophy and sustainable development

4Epistemology

5Aesthetics

6Ethics

a.Bioethics

b.Business ethics

7Philosophy and social sciences

8Philosophy of Man

9Dialogue philosophy

10Feminist philosophy and gender studies

11Philosophy of language

12Philosophy of culture

13Philosophy of law

14Philosophy of nature

15Philosophy of religion

16Social and political philosophy

17Philosophy of technology

18Philosophy of mind and cognitive science

19Philosophy of the East

20History of philosophy

a.Modern and contemporary philosophy

b.The history of Polish philosophy

c.Antique and medieval philosophy

21Logic

22Metaphilosophy

23Methologogy and the philosophy of science

24Ontology and metaphysics

ANNEX 3

Programme of St Petersburg Days of Philosophy Nov 2012

The programme is extensive, cf. http://philosophy.spbu.ru/en/6396/8342

ANNEX 4

Who does what in russian philosophy today?

CONTENTS.

TENTATIVE TRANSLATIONS

ВВЕДЕНИЕ introduction

Нилогов А. Что такое современная русская философия? . What is contemporary Russian philosophy?. . . . . . .8

Нилогов А. «Вечное дежавю» философии . . . .The eternal déjà-vu of philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

ФИЛОСОФСКИЕ БЕСЕДЫ PHILOSOPHICAL CONVERSATIONS

Ашкеров А. Нация — это постоянный флэш_моб…This is a continuous ’flash mob’ . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Васюков В. Формализация философии . .The formalisation of philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Галковский Д. Альтернативный русский философ . . An alternative Russian philosopher. . . . . . . . . . .49

Гиренок Ф. Где пушки — там и философия! . . Where the cans are – there is also philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

Дмитриев В. Граф_анализ . . . . . The graphical analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

Дубровский Д. Субъективная реальность . . . Subjective reality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Зиновьев А. Рабства без рабовладельцев не бывает . . There is no slavery without slave-owners. . . . . . . . . .90

Кралечкин Д. Мира нет и не надо . .There is no peace and no need of it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100

Малер А. Неовизантизм как новый большой стиль . . Neo-Byzantinism as a new big style. . . . . . . . .110

Мамлеев Ю. Русская философия не должна уступать

русской литературе . . Russian philosophy should not give way to Russian literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125

Матвейчев О. Миром правят философы! . .Philosophers rule with peace! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137

Миронов В. Философия как самосознание культуры . .Philosophy as the cultural consciousness . . . . . . . .151

Нилогов А. Философия — это сплошной ressentiment . .Philosophy – that is a compact ressentiment . . . . . . .175

Петровская Е. Назвать себя философом — большая

ответственность . . . . . To call yourself a philospoher – a great responsibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192

Пятигорский А. I. Честно говоря, никакой русской

философии нет... . . .Honestly speaking, there is no Russian philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .204

II. Я гедонист, а не нарциссист! . .I am a hedonist, but not a Narcissist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214

Руднев В. Гипотеза множественности психических миров .The hypothesis of the plurality of psychic worlds . . . .234

Рыклин М. Произведение философии в эпоху

«суверенной демократии» . . .The production of philosophy in an epoch of ”sovereign democracy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246

Савчук В. Геометафизика, или Топологическая рефлексия . Geometaphysics, or Topological reflection . . . 266

Секацкий А. Прикладная метафизика . . .Exemplary metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .283

Семёнова С. Борьба со смертобожничеством . . .The struggle with the death of the divinity . . . . . . . . . . . . .292

Смирнова Е. Логическая семантика и вопросы обоснования

логических систем . . Logical semantics and the issues of founding logical systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309

Солодухо Н. Теория «философии небытия» . . The theory of ”logical non-being”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .320

Сосланд А. Философия сквозь призму аттрактив_анализа . .Philosophy through the prism of attractives of analysis . .?? .327

Фомин О. Русский поиск философского камня . .Russian search of a philosophical stone . . . ?. . . . . . . . .340

Эпштейн М. Умножение сущностей . . . The multiplication of realities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .346

ФИЛОСОФСКИЕ МАНИФЕСТЫ PHILOSOPHICAL MANIFESTOES

Гачев Г. Философская исповесть (самопредставление) . Philosophical confession, a self-presentation ?. . . . . . .362

Гиренок Ф. Философия — это наше уже_сознание Philosophy – that is our conscience ?. . . . . . . . . . . .385

Дугин А. Короткий путь к абсолютному знанию . A shortcut to absolute knowledge. . . . . . . . . . .402

Крылов К. Проба пера: философия после приватизации . . .An attempt of peer?? Philosophy after privatisation . . .423

Кузнецов В. «Концептуальный переводчик»: подступы

к программе . . . . A conceptual translator: steps to a programme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .429

Мамлеев Ю. Судьба Бытия и Последняя Доктрина

(автоинтервью) . .The fate of Being and the Last Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .449

Матвейчев О. Страна господ . . .The country of Lords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .464

Нилогов А. Философия антиязыка . . . .Philosophy of anti-lanugage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .489

Пригов Д. Зоны выживания в культуре . . . . The zones of experience in culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .504

Романов В. Об устроении человека (в жанре исповеди

научного работника, находящего утешение в методологии) . On the construction of Man.( In the genre of a confession of a research worker, who finds consolation in methodology) 515

Солодухо Н. Понимание онтологического статуса небытия . The understanding of the ontological status of non-being. .547

Сосланд А. Аттрактив_анализ . . . .The attractions ?? of analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .553

Эпштейн М. Личный код: опыт самоописания . . . . Personal code: the experience of self-description. . . . . . . . .560_