Abstract
I was introduced to Alessandro Ferrara at a conference in Madrid in 1992. Our meeting was a life-changing experience for me, as it ended with an invitation to attend the famous critical theory colloquium that had just moved from its long-time home in Dubrovnik to Prague.
Attending that first conference, I listened with rapt attention as distinguished scholars presented their work on a diverse range of social, political and institutional problems. Feminist stars discussed their ideas. Using entirely new frames and paradigms, leading critical theorists gave radical critiques of the issues they were studying and writing about. The lectures that I heard that first time – and ever after – have become fundamental points of references beyond the scope of critical theory.
Over the 25 years that I have attended the Prague conference, first as one of the few Latin American professors and then as a director, I can say that nowhere have I found a more respectful group of scholars, who actually know how to listen and to raise the right critical questions. For me and for most participants, the discussions of issues related to oppression, domination and injustice reflect what is actually happening in the world. The speakers always have the knack of shaping their arguments in a systematic way, asking the right questions and, as Rainer Forst would say, putting ‘first things first’. And the audience’s responses – verbal or, eventually, written – have always been as important as the papers themselves.
Attending that first meeting as well as those that followed has been a fertile experience of learning. It has also been the place where I got to know, and become friends with, many of my critical theory heroes. Beginning with that first Prague meeting, I discovered that Alessandro Ferrara had a rare quality among intellectuals and academics. He has what we call in Spanish a ‘don de gentes’, which means that he possesses the art of knowing how to treat people well, no matter what their standing – whether they are newcomers, as I was, or members of the Old Guard.
In addition to his formidable personal qualities, Alessandro has made seminal contributions as a scholar. His work on ‘authenticity’, for example, has become a major feature of modern subjectivity. And his writings on judgement and, more recently, democracy have offered us the possibility of exploring dimensions of philosophy and social sciences through his construction of the link between aesthetics and politics. Through Alessandro’s leadership a large group of Italian scholars, some of them not widely known, has been present in Prague. Their work has been recognized as being as original and insightful as that of those from the mainstream German and American traditions.
Marek Hrubec, another dynamic director, represents much of what the Prague colloquium stands for among intellectual and academics – a cosmopolitan space where like-minded thinkers unite to develop and discuss their best ideas. Much of the Prague colloquium’s unique position the world over is due to Marek’s leadership.
Axel Honneth has given us the chance to engage in intense discussions about social philosophy. With his research on recognition, which began in the early 1990s, he has opened critical theory to what became one of the most polemic stages when Nancy Fraser engaged in this discussion. Fraser’s views about the need to think that recognition without redistribution (and political representation) from our horizon of critical examination led to the abandonment of an entire range of problems at the core of political justice. Over the many years of discussion and collaboration between Honneth and Fraser, many of us participants have contributed to this important issue by clarifying our own positions and introducing nuanced distinctions.
Among the Prague contributors who have become my dear friends, I also include Frank Michelman, whose discussions with Jürgen Habermas on constitutional rights took place when he was one of our directors. We owe much to him, to be sure – not only because of his theory about constitutional law, but also because of his leadership and sense of innovation, which included opening our group to colleagues from other disciplines, especially the law. Many of these legal scholars have remained as fundamental to our group as Frank himself.
In concluding, I wish to acknowledge one participant whom I met that first year in Prague and who made the strongest impression on me: Maeve Cooke. As I listened to her speak in a plenary that last Sunday morning in 1992, she transformed herself as an actor when she took the stage. In conveying the most complex and subtle critical analysis of Habermas’ deliberative theory, she made it clear that even the most complex ideas can sound like good literature when the speaker has such a command of her subject, possesses such clarity of mind and speaks with such eloquence.