Report oа the Conference ‘Phenomenology and Aristotle’.
The 7th Central and the Eastern European Conference on Phenomenology “Phenomenology and
Aristotle”, dedicated to Russian philosopher Alexei Chernyakov, was held in Saint Petersburg, 2-3
June, 2012. The Organizer of the Conference was the institute «St Petersburg School of Religion
and Philosophy» with the assistance of the SPECRS group, working on the Project Multidisciplinary
Collaboration in Science, Religion, Culture: Preparing Community Leaders for the Twenty-First Century
(Grant ID #15652 from the John Templeton Foundation). The working language of the Conference was
English. Scholars from Russia, America, Great Britain, Greece, Romania, Finland and Germany
participated the Conference. The sponsoring organizations of the Conference were: The
Organization of Phenomenological Organizations (OPO), St. Petersburg School of Religion and
Philosophy, Russia; Department of Philosophy, University of Patras, Greece.
The Conference pursued several purposes: one of them was to clarify contemporary
conditions of phenomenological movement and its methodological opportunities to interpret
Aristotle’s philosophy with the application to scholastic and religious studies. Another strategy of
the Conference was to eliminate barriers between phenomenological interpretations of Aristotle and
allied them to the other interpretations of Aristotle. Borders of “phenomenology” were determined
quite widely, and the speakers represented professional approach to Heidegger’s, Husserl’s and
Brentano’s philosophy. Areas of phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle were also quite broad:
it was possible to hear reports on the problems of ontology, logic, Aristotle’s physics, ethics,
psychology, or, anthropology. There were reports on phenomenological questions indirectly
touching the problems of Aristotelians’, however, representing the Aristotle’s doctrine in a certain
phenomenological perspective.
During the first day of the Conference the papers were presented by the Drs.: Natalia
Pecherskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Pavlos Kontos (Patras, Greece), Robert Gallagher (Beirut,
Lebanon), Tatiana Litvin (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Andrey Patkul (Saint Petersburg, Russia). The
themes of the presented papers related to ethics, the first philosophy, logic, the concept of movement,
phenomenological and analytical methods of interpretation of Aristotle.
The second day of the Conference included presentations by Drs.: Jussi Backman (Helsinki,
Finland), Mikhail Khorkov (Moscow, Russia), Ion Tănăsesku (Bucharest, Romania), Irina
Makarova (Moscow, Russia), Michael Kelly (Boston, the USA), Michael Weinman (Berlin,
Germany). The themes of that session related to ethics and metaphysics of Aristotle, anthropology,
psychology, applied questions of phenomenology.
In the framework of the second day of the Conference a Round Table on Russian research in
phenomenology had taken place, during which several short reports on reception of Aristotle and
phenomenology in Russia were presented. Among them were reports of the Drs.: Natalia Artemenko
(Saint Petersburg), Alexei Vyazmin (Saint Petersburg), Alexander Mikhailovsky (Moscow), Igor
Zaitsev (Saint Petersburg), Alexander Markov (Moscow).
It was possible to see the differences in approaches and interpretations between the Western
and the Russian colleagues. Western scholars showed magnificent skills to cite the Aristotle in
ancient Greek, excellent knowledge of Aristotelian scholar discourse, demonstrated professionalism,
erudition, and new ideas to interpret Aristotle broadly in phenomenological context. This knowledge
of Aristotle became crucial to open to the Russian colleagues (which based their knowledge and
work in phenomenology mostly in the scope of ideas closely associated with the German tradition) a
vast and diverse scholar tradition of approaches to phenomenology and to Aristotelian philosophy
existed now in the world, besides the German one. This opening hopefully will become a new
source of inspiration to develop phenomenology in Russia, as well as to learn deeply the Aristotelian
heritage in general, which may course new type of collaboration among the scholars belonging to different philosophical traditions.