Abstract
During the 1960s and 1970s, the former Yugoslavia was a country where Marxist humanists and critics of Stalinism were allowed a certain amount of freedom. Consequently, Yugoslavia became a meeting place for left intellectuals from all over the world. The Praxis group started the journal Praxis (with an international edition) and they organized a famous gathering of leftist thinkers at the island Korčula. But in the mid-1970s Tito decided to crack down on the Praxis group. The state subsidy for the journal was withdrawn; annual meetings at Korčula were banned; and 8 members of the Praxis group from Belgrade University were dismissed. They were charged as being ‘corrupters of the youth’. At about the same time a new international institution, the Interuniversity Centre for Post-Graduate Studies, was founded in Dubrovnik. The purpose was to provide an institution that would sponsor international conferences and discussions – where intellectuals from eastern Europe and the West could engage in open and free discussion. One of the first directors was Johann Galtung. When the Belgrade 8 were dismissed, Gajo Petrovic, the leader of the Zagreb Praxis group, asked Jürgen Habermas if he might organize a seminar–conference at the Dubrovnik Centre that would sponsor the type of discussions that had taken place in Korčula – and would also include as participants members of the Praxis group.
In the fall of 1976, Habermas was a visiting professor at Haverford College – the college in Pennsylvania where I was teaching at the time. Habermas asked if I would join him as a co-director of the course ‘Philosophy and the Social Sciences’ to be held at the Dubrovnik Interuniversity Centre. I eagerly agreed to do so. Ironically, our course was the only place where the Belgrade 8 could give public lectures and participate in public discussions in Yugoslavia. Habermas and I agreed to co-direct the course as a gesture of solidarity with our Yugoslavian colleagues. In those early years, when we met for two intensive weeks, heated discussions (as well as eating and drinking) seemed to go on 24 hours day and night. In addition to the Praxis group, we attracted a remarkable group of participants: Albrecht Wellmer, Claus Offe, Charles Taylor, Richard Rorty, Steven Lukes, Anthony Giddens, Gayatri Spivak, Alain Touraine, Cornelius Castoriadis, Agnes Heller, Ferenc Feher, Marx Wartofsky, Carol Gould – the list goes on and on. We also attracted a remarkable group of talented graduate students as participants, including Ivan Vejvoda, Axel Honneth, Seyla Benhabib, Nancy Fraser, Linda Nicolson, Tom McCarthy, Andrew Arato, Jean Cohen, Maria Herrera, Joel Whitebook, Rainer Forst, Judith Butler, Alessandro Ferrara (and many, many others) who have all become distinguished scholars. What started as an informal gesture of solidarity rapidly became a unique international meeting place attracting many of the most interesting established and younger thinkers throughout the world. In the mid-1980s Habermas and I thought that we might end the course that had been running for almost a decade. But several of the younger participants felt it was too important and a unique opportunity for free and open discussions. A decision was made to turn organizing the course over to a ‘younger’ generation. When Yugoslavia began to break up, when there were serious splits arising among members of the Praxis group and when the Balkan wars broke out, it became impossible to continue the meetings in Dubrovnik. But here was a dedicated group that included Alessandro Ferrara, Jean Cohen, Axel Honneth and Ivan Vejvoda, who refused to discontinue the unique spirit of discussion and interchange that had begun at Dubrovnik. They searched for a new home, and Alessandro Ferrara negotiated with the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences for establishing such a new home eventually in Prague; it is now celebrating its 25th anniversary. Although the philosophical and political situation today is radically different than it was in the 1970s, the Prague meetings continue to be a vital center of discussion, friendship and serious interchange. There are now 4th- and 5th-generation participants at the Prague meetings. This is a remarkable story of the constant creative renewal and regeneration. All those who have been directors of the Prague meetings are to be praised for their persistence and dedication in creating an ever-widening group of participants. In these dark times when authoritarian regimes are gaining power throughout the world, it becomes even more vital to keep alive the critical democratic spirit that has always informed the Dubrovnik–Prague discussions.