Peace and Understanding: A Ricoeurian View

September 14-16, 2023

Åbo Akademi University, Turku (Åbo), Finland

Call for Papers

Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy is known for its emphasis on the unceasing conflict of interpretations. Taking this as Ricoeur’s philosophical grand thesis would, however, be gravely misleading. In spite of acknowledging such conflict Ricoeur always sided with the possibility of shared meaning, as well as of translation and communication between different cultural contexts. Moreover, Ricoeur stressed “living a good life with and for others in just institutions” as a summation of his ethico-political views.

A workshop on Ricoeur’s contribution to the questions of war, power, violence, social justice, interreligious understanding and reconciliation will explore the notion of peace in Ricoeur’s works from his early essays on Christian socialism to his last published work on recognition. Peace will be approached not merely as a social, political, ethical, or cultural concept but also as an existential and hermeneutical challenge and possibility.

Keynotes by Professor Brian Gregor (Philosophy Department, California State University) and Professor Marianne Moyaert (The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven).

Please submit your 250-300 word proposal as an MS Word document or as a pdf file by email (bjorn.vikstrom@abo.fi) by May 15, 2023.

The applicants will be informed of acceptance or refusal of their abstracts before the end of May. The participants, whose papers are accepted, will be asked to send an updated version of their abstract to the organizers two weeks before the workshop, in order to help the moderators and commentators in their tasks.

Workshop homepage

Contact information:

Prof. Björn Vikström, bjorn.vikstrom@abo.fi

Dr. Timo Helenius, timo.helenius@abo.fi