Abstract
The Prague conferences on Philosophy and Social Science have been an important contribution to my experience and thinking in recent years. This lively group of scholars hails from far and wide, and has the advantage of being thoroughly committed to engaging social scientific theory from several angles including a critical perspective. Though I am a relative newcomer that first heard of this gathering only 4 years ago, since then I have been back yearly. What I experience is an ongoing sense that political theory is deeply intertwined with real political issues and is not just academic rhetoric. From viewing a movie on Hannah Arendt that was introduced by the director, to considering the crisis faced by a president that was being impeached in Brazil, there has been no lack of constructive authenticity in these gatherings.
Coming from southern Europe, I find appealing the fact that conversations lead to further discussions. This is no academic meeting where form trumps content. Rather, each contribution seems to have its own momentum and receive its own consideration. I have found it fascinating to hear or mingle with recognized thinkers like Charles Taylor, while equally engaging to be considering the work of brilliant graduate students from around the world. Discussing the ideas of Jürgen Habermas or Axel Honneth while sipping a Volkopopovicky somehow feels spot-on here. Many participants managed to dine several times under the stars in a square or plaza in downtown Prague, talking late into the night and even missing the last tram back to the hotel. Sitting near Alessandro Ferrara and Bill Scheuerman, with a deep sense of concern for where political theory is headed, one feels that this conference gives meaning to the social sciences and philosophy in a way that academia dominated by quantitative research seldom does.
Though English is the lingua franca, I encounter a multitude of other languages in the corridors of Villa Lanna, the elegant Czech Academy of Sciences building where the meetings are held. In these times when ultra-nationalist or monocultural thinking has in some countries made open-minded diversity seem suspect, one concludes that these interdisciplinary, multicultural gatherings are all the more needed. I have seen some heated discussions at these conferences, given the diversity of views present, and yet they generally seemed to yield a further enriching of ideas.
My reading list is considerably longer each time I leave Prague. I depart with a sharpened sense of the latest normative questions to be addressed, along with a number of books that are urgently demanding attention thanks to discussions with the conference participants. Many of the faces present have now become familiar to me, but new voices are heard each year too. I cannot catalogue this as one more academic gathering, as it seems to offer an air that is both more festive and yet more engaged than the posture of detached formality required in certain other conferences. Why should not academics exchange ideas in genial and less formal settings that invite genuine theorizing?
I have found my research remains significantly influenced by the direction of the thinking I glean from the Prague critical theory discussions: normativity is not lost, but now requires a frame of reference that engages both contemporary societies and their deeper foundations. For me, coming from a country like Spain where this sort of exchange is needed, a sense of satisfaction is felt. In my country, with the rise of new political movements such as a political party that has its roots in the works of Ernesto Laclau, these gatherings have offered a chance to understand and examine this symbiosis of praxis and theory.