On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Immanuel Kant, an international conference under the title After Kant: What do Art and Literature owe to Kant? took place at our faculty during three hot days at the end of June. On June 24th-26th, 36 participants from practically all over the world presented. The first two days were held in English and hybrid mode. The third day was reserved for discussions in Czech, where mainly students of the follow-up master's program Philosophy in the Context of Humanities spoke: Eliška Rosenbaumová, Barbora Římalová, and Jakub Stoček, as well as Adam Vostárek from the doctoral program in Philosophical Anthropology. Each day had a keynote speaker; on the first day, it was Ian Alexander Moore of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, on the second James D. Reid of Metropolitan State University of Denver, CO and the entire conference was rounded off by Ladislav Benyovszky and Richard Zika from the Department of Philosophy of our alma mater.

As the conference title suggests, the main focus was more on the reception and discussion of Kant's thoughts regarding aesthetic experience, and thus, his third Critique of Judgment from 1790 was the area of interest. The contributions covered both the themes and period of Kant's contemporaries (Schiller, Herder, Goethe, Humboldt, Schelling et alii) to a very recent discussion in the field of aesthetic theories (Thierry de Duve), not only in the field of philosophy but also in the novel, poetic and visual creation. We heard contributions addressing the echoes or direct reception of Kant's work in F. M. Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, in Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett, in the novels of Albert Camus, in the music of the band The Grateful Dead, and even in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Miloš Forman. Recurring themes were sublime, genius, tragic, or (non) biased aesthetic experience. In addition to the contributions of the keynote speakers above, the lectures of overseas students Sarah Ratzlaff (University of Toronto) and Daniel LeBlanc (Yale University) stood out, as well as their contributions to the discussion after individual lectures.

Foto: Ondřej Trojan, Štěpán Šanda

Foreign participants praised the amiable welcome and constant communication of the organisers, the environment of our faculty building, the friendly, relaxed, and inspiring atmosphere of the whole event as well as the beauty of our capital city. The compliments ranged from a rather exaggerated: “the best conference I have attended” to more realistic “the most enjoyable", "friendliest", and "most inspiring" conference.

The conference would not have been so successful without our doctoral students Alexandra Brocková, Tatia Basilaia, Brice Cantrell, Marek Lentvorský, Shawn Christopher Vigil, and Marek Vodička who took inspiration in our last years extremely successful conference for the celebration of 400th anniversary of the birth of Blaise Pascal. Marek Lentvorský even helped out at the last minute with the moderation of the entire afternoon session on Tuesday, June 25. A big thanks to all of them. To conclude, it should be noted that the event was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Cooperatio program, the Philosophy department, for which the organisers are extremely grateful.

Shall we do it again in 2025 for the 250th anniversary of FJW Schelling's birth?

Aleš Novák, translation: Melanie S. Terry