Academic Centre
82nd International Scientific Conference of the UL, the Joint Section of Faculty of History and Philosophy
Idea and organization: Andris Levāns, Raivis Bičevskis, Rūdolfs R. Vītoliņš, Rūdis Bebrišs
Riga, May 9th, 2024, 09.30, in person
Kerkovius’s House, Kalpaka boulevard 4
English translation by Rūdis Bebrišs
The craft of both philosophers and historians relies on a conversation with their predecessors and colleagues, even if only in textual form, regarding specific questions, research problems, and discussed subject areas. This conversation can be supportive, confrontational, or justificatory, while the conversation partners may include academic metricians, idiosyncratics, conjuncturists, marginals, and tricksters of the related topic, whether alive or long gone. In choosing the topic for this section of the 82nd International Scientific Conference of the UL, the organizers invite participants to specifically engage with the deceased and forgotten, the frighteningly enchanting, extremely challenging and shamelessly deceitful guild brothers and sisters whose relationships with science, the intellectual environment, and themselves were made discordant not only by choosing uncomfortable topics or ideas but also by dangerously nearing political ideologies and border-regions of historical knowledge.
As the visual motif for the conference theme, the organizers have chosen the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones’s painting The Beguiling of Merlin (1872/77). It depicts a variation of an Arthurian legend in which the wizard Merlin is imprisoned underground (also in a cave or a tree trunk) by the Lady of the Lake (Nimue or Viviane). This beguiling is the consequence of a dangerous deal in which Viviane promised herself to Merlin if he revealed all his occult knowledge to her. It was a destiny foreseen by Merlin’s clairvoyant abilities, but he succumbed to it. This perilous encounter also provides thought-provoking poetic expressions for the topic of the conference. The exploration and explorers of the past and the world can enchant, bewitch, and entangle, even if we are knowledgeable and have heard many warnings about the influence (even destructive power) of ideas. At some point in life, we may have even promised ourselves that it will never happen to us. Or the other way around: we have consciously gone in the direction of challenging, scandalous topics, knowing that we’re paying a high price for intellectual work – in the best case, society receives but an imprint of conflicting reputation. Even going through with it can leave us in sadness about the time lost in the captivity of ideas or, worse, a wound for a lifetime.
The objective of the conference is to analyse and explain how the unconventional approaches of particular historians and philosophers were responses to the challenges of their time – social upheavals, wars, politically utopian expectations of the future, student unrest, totalitarianism or colonialism, ecological crises, or technological revolutions; what was the motivation to go off the beaten path? The task of the conference is to find answers to the questions about the allure of ideas that “promise” solutions and the realization of expectations but hold a hidden danger of getting lost in the seeming truthiness of ideologies. Without claiming the “last word”, the conference aims to offer a space to observe and explain how the lurking traps of ideas and destinies work and find concrete examples of how important it is for researchers of both history and philosophy to recognize their own face in their reflection – in a text, research paper, expression (even if, in this turning point of historical self-awareness we perceive the features of a monster) – and to learn to deal with the seemingly strange, funny, incomprehensible, ungraspable, and momentarily unacceptable with understanding. Even historical research is a path in which “I have sought for myself” (Heraclitus, Fragment 101)
The participants of the conference are invited to consider and seek answers to the following questions in their statements:
1. How does a historian’s or philosopher’s inquiry form? What determines the conceptual and compositional unity of the study? Are researchers themselves able to be aware of the leading ideas, approaches, methods, and contemporary demands of their work?
2. How should one deal with the legacy of previous generations in the scientific disciplines? When and to what extent should one let themselves depend on paradigms of the past that dictate the choices of the present on what is “important” and “unimportant”, “researchable” and “non-essential for research”, “advantageous” and “disadvantageous”?
3. What is the role of the researcher in the process of social and political history? Does the researcher inescapably create myths and operate within the frameworks of ideologies? Is an objective view from Nowhere (T. Nagel) towards history possible? What are the tasks of a historian or a philosopher in society? What function do studies of history serve in the current social context?
4. Is it important to remember the history of one’s own scientific discipline and research field and know the changes in perspective within them? What even are the relations between tradition, the outsiders, and the border-crossers of the discipline? Where and how is the border between the “mainstream” and the “outside” drawn? Is it important that paradigms of the field exist and that they’re entered by puer robustus (T. Hobbes) – “stout boys” – that cross boundaries and overcome thresholds?
5. What do we gain today by reading authors who wrote about history and philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries? Is it possible to read them today outside of purely historiographical interest? Which researchers from this period should be made relevant today and why?
6. What dangers does a historian or a philosopher encounter when beginning research in their field? Are these dangers uniform, or do they stem from various sources? What joys await the historian or the philosopher when encountering the recently or long deceased colleagues of the discipline? Why do we still read some authors in our fields, while others are forgotten?
This historiographically focused conference invites representatives of the humanities, especially history, literary studies, theology, and philosophy, to introduce us to the genius (and therefore incomprehensible) metricians and the odd (and therefore seemingly well-classifiable) outsiders of their discipline, explain their work’s ideational background at the time and affirm the significance of these ideas today.
For participation with a presentation, we ask to prepare a proposal with the following information – name, surname, representing research institution, research interests, title of the presentation in Latvian and English, and a description of the topic up to 850 characters. Please submit your proposals by sending them to the e-mail address rudolfs_reinis.vitolins@lu.lv by April 1st, 2024, with the subject indication The Forgotten.
The conference will take place in person at the Kerkovius House on Kalpaka Boulevard 4 on May 9th, with the option for foreign presenters to participate remotely. The section’s work will also be broadcast on the Facebook profile of the Faculty of History and Philosophy.
More detailed information about the section’s schedule will follow.
