Abstract
My story begins in 1992 in the commons room of the Imperial Hotel when Gvozden Flego from Croatia and Ivan Vejvoda from Serbia led a joint session on why Yugoslavia would remain united. About three months later that very room was firebombed along with the rest of the hotel and it became apparent that the course on philosophy and social science, which had been alive and well for most of two decades, was about to bite the dust. Dubrovnik was magnificent in every way. This old fortress city, Ragusa, with its stradun glistening at night, its discos and gambling casinos, Rosario’s restaurant where our IUC crowd hung out, located in the country that was known as the center of socialism’s third way, met George Bernard Shaw’s description as ‘paradise on earth’ or so it seemed. It was our good fortune that Ivan Supek, rector of the University of Zagreb, had already in 1970 conceived the idea of establishing the Inter-University Center for Post-Graduate Studies where we held our course. Those were heady times: Marxism was in the air, critical theory was flourishing and we were able to support the Praxis group that was experiencing the oppression of Tito’s government. About that time I began to self-publish Philosophy & Social Criticism and it was this group more than any other that provided editors, authors and reviewers: the lifeblood of any journal.
Then Ischia. With the coming of the war in Yugoslavia I presume most of us thought things were over, at least for a while. However, Alessandro Ferrara found a way of keeping us alive by meeting on Ischia where we could watch the morning sunrise over Capri. It was a motley group of 6 or 7 meeting in an unheated library listening to each other’s papers while trying to stay warm. The one memorable incident was looking at the sad face of Axel Honneth staring out through the glass front of a bar, locked in by the mafia as ransom for the drinks Maeve Cooke led us to refuse to pay for. Reluctantly, we paid and Axel was liberated. Sandro who understood the precariousness of the scene disappeared. Prague, again made possible through the negotiations of Alessandro, succeeded beyond expectations. Although lacking the small-town charm of Dubrovnik, Prague has the advantage of being easy to get to, and, as some of us discovered immediately, it also has discos as well as an incredible history. Among other things, Prague has been a kind of laboratory where individuals have been able to present what they regard as their best ideas to one another. Of course, sometimes these are not the greatest ideas but that is where the fun begins because this crowd is completely unapologetic in its willingness to take a critical stance. The result is that after a presentation is made one will take ample time to rethink a position. I know of no conference or course or group with higher standards. An important addition to the Prague course was the introduction of a group led by Frank Michelman of distinguished lawyers and legal philosophers who enhanced our discussions. I think particularly of the contributions of Steve Shiffrin and the late Ed Baker. Frankly, it was in the context of critical openness that I was able to work out along with others my position affirmative of critical theory and open to American political philosophy. As an editor of a journal whose work has been and still is closely associated with the activities of this group I owe a debt of gratitude for your enthusiasm, your ideas and your participation. The journal never would have survived without you.
Finally, there is one bit of history that I have not explained but that continues to spark my imagination as well as to feed my love of Dubrovnik. In 1992 during the last meeting of this group in Dubrovnik Joseph Bien asked me if I wanted to participate in the other group that was meeting at the same time. The other group was a splinter group whose origins, dated to the 1970s and 1980s, are somewhat unclear to me at least. In any case, I said yes and we met 5 years after the war was over and still continue to meet. That course, listed as the Course on Social Philosophy, is still at the IUC, which was bombed and rebuilt after the war featuring an encased partially burnt volume in the entry as a reminder. And the Imperial Hotel where we used to catch up on our sleep during the break for lunch still stands now lavishly rebuilt in all its glory.