Conference of the Flying University and the Center for European Transformation, 27-28 February 2015

 

A New “Axial Age” and an Era of Radical Doubt: Challenges for Thought and Practice 

Karl Jaspers called the “Axial Age” an era of transition from meanings and values that had lost their relevance to new points of orientation. This time is marked by radical doubt and existential fear before the impossibility of answering the fundamental questions of “why” and “for what purpose” human beings live, and before the recognition that the entire apparatus of thought and culture has become unsuitable for such answers. The turning of time around its axis occurred because heroes, tricksters, thinkers, and creators formulated new orientations, proposed new values, and thereby set and created new civilisations.

After the Second World War, intellectual discourse was focused on dismantling those “absolute” values of modernity that had become the cause of world wars. It seemed that postmodernism had coped with this task. It seemed that the world was being built on new values and that this was precisely why it had managed to avoid war for more than half a century, while even the USSR, the centre of the “Second World”, collapsed without large-scale violence. But the Russian-Ukrainian war has revealed problems and directly called into question the existence and validity of contemporary international law, political and social institutions, stable communities and societies, human self-understanding and identity, and the meanings and values to which we have become accustomed to appeal in understanding and in practice. The values, norms, and categories of thought that emerged in the modern era lost their force through deconstruction and relativisation by postmodernism. But now the principles and values of postmodernism itself are also losing their force. It turned out not to be a new answer, but only a time of radical doubt: a step and a precursor to a turn toward new values, meanings, and goals capable of making mutual understanding and collective action possible.

Within the conference, we will deepen our understanding of the “Axial Age” and seek answers to questions at the intersection of different spheres of thought and practice. We hope that this understanding will become not only a basis for new concepts and theories, but also a foundation for transformations of social reality and changes in Belarusian society.

We propose the following main topics for consideration:

Names, concepts, and tools of thought: philosophical and methodological reflection and critique

The “name of the present”: variations around modernity or new definitions? Can contemporary philosophy pose anew the “main question of philosophy”? New ontology, language, or art: what creates new meanings, constructs worlds, and gives them names? Deconstruction or new universals: what helps us understand the contemporary post-Soviet, Belarusian, and European situation? 

Back to the future: the return of the history of the present

The new global situation as a framework for rethinking the “end of history”. How is historical man possible today? The means of historical disciplines in the return of history: practices and methodological approaches. Phenomena of modern times – “patriotic”, “civil”, and “world” wars: do these concepts belong to history or to the present?

Anthropological critique and humanitarian technologies: why and how should we be together?

Europeanness, citizenship, nation, gender, culture, communities – old and new frameworks of self-definition and human identity. Whom do new anthropological, psychological, and humanitarian practices and techniques create? Ethical systems and absolute values: archaic forms or a new reality? What will give humanity a new chance to stop a world war?

Socio-political institutions and practices before new challenges

Do “modern practices” of nation-building, civil society development, and human rights protection still have meaning and value? What helps us understand new social and political phenomena – metaphors or categories? Where can the “real” be found among simulacra and media phantoms? Human beings and communities in networked and information space: victims or subjects of social action? 

The conference will take place in Minsk on 27-28 February 2015. 

To participate in the conference, please send an application  by 5 February to [email protected]    with the following information:

1) First and last name

2) Place of work or study, position

3) Form of participation in the conference:

– presentation. The title and abstract of the presentation are required (1.5-2 pages).

– participation in the general discussion. Please indicate the aims and motives for participating in the conference.

4) Contact details: e-mail, phone.

The number of conference participants is limited, and the Organising Committee reserves the right to select participants according to the “aims and motives of participation”. 

For all organisational questions, please contact Tatsiana Vadalazhskaya, [email protected], +375296754625