[URBAN LEGENDS] The Third of the Philosophical Perspectives on Peace Conference - Witnessing the Birth of a New Perspective on Peace

    More than 2,000 years have passed since Plato wrote those words. But still, when we think about the basic aim of academia and academic life and of academicians, their function -- to theorize on the idiosyncrasies of the actual system and, in a way, improve them through creating awareness or offering solutions, even without intending to do so -- has not changed.

    It is through this perspective that the third of the “Philosophical Perspectives of Peace” conferences, which was held at Boğaziçi University in İstanbul this week, really matters. In fact, in the new époque of academic conferences, those that are touching “worldly matters urgently awaiting concern” really do matter, as long as these conferences genuinely attempt to find solutions the problems at hand. With internet dominating communication, academics now hear about academic gatherings in a fairly high-tech way, through online “conference alerts” sorted according to their academic “tastes.”

    In this climate, when there is a recurring conference held in different locations around the world organized by the same committee of professors, one is able to hope that this conference will have a chance -- even if it is only a slight chance -- to make the world a better place by becoming a seat of power in the “thinking” world -- the world of academics -- which directly influences the “doing” world -- that of politicians. Lately, the hot topics of these conferences have been issues such as peace, violence, pain, multiculturalism, madness, identity and so on. These are the hot topics in the real world we live in.

    Hence, when I attended the third “Philosophical Perspectives of Peace” conference at Boğaziçi University I was excited that an academic conference on a matter as important as peace was on its way to becoming a seat of power in the “thinking” world, influencing social and judicial relations of power, offering both theories and possible solutions to practical problems.

    The conference started on June 25 and lasted until June 27. It was held at the İbrahim Bodur Auditorium in the university's Natuk Birkan Building. Academics from all over the world presented papers and exchanged ideas on practically every thought that might have something to do with peace, from Francis Fukuyama's “end of history” thesis to Immanuel Kant's “perpetual peace” theory, from Eastern mysticism to practical conditions of peace, from Chimpanzees and the evolutionary aspects of violence to traveling as a condition of peace making. The conference was organized by the Boğaziçi University philosophy department, however its founders and current “movers and shakers are Sergueï Spetschinsky, a Belgian scholar from the Technical University (TU) of Berlin and Lucas Thorpe from Bilkent University's graduate faculty, both academics in their universities' philosophy departments.

    The conference was an interesting opportunity to see “philosophers in action” and among those who participated in the conference there was a good mix of philosophers from all levels of academia, such as Dr. Harry Lesser from the University of Manchester who gave a paper titled “Kant or Machiavelli” and Carlota Moiso, an Italian undergraduate philosophy student from the University of Turin, who presented a paper called “About Dynamic Identity.” Some of the philosophers participating were influential activists holding important positions in political institutions in their countries such as Thomas Baum from Belgium, the director of the Flemish Peace Institute in Brussels who gave a paper titled “Seeing is Believing”. This was the third of the “Philosophical Perspectives on Peace” conferences, the previous two were held in Berlin, one at the TU Berlin and the other being at the Arttransponder Gallery, the next ones will be held in Barcelona and at Oxford University.

    The best thing about these conferences is that every thinker finds an arena to have their thoughts criticized in such a way that the drawbacks of their position are revealed to them immediately due to the incessant “bombardment” against their theoretical position. And when academics criticize, they have no mercy at all, so you can count on having the most objective critiques at your disposal once you happen to display your “paper on peace.”

    After three days of discussions and presentations, with a lot of eating, drinking, being merry and exploring the wonders of Istanbul in between, the conference was concluded, with the next to be held at Oxford University in 2010. The good thing is that all the conference papers will be published and they can be read as a current academic mirror on what is going on in the world these days through philosophical perspectives.

    It is always possible to despair and lose one's hope in the power of the “ivory towers” of philosophers -- and academics in general -- to change the world. However, since this conference on peace is a recurring and advancing one, there is hope that, just as most currents of thought that were influential in the past century were sprouted in academic gatherings, these conferences will be one of the first buds of the revolutionary aspect of peace and the development of peace making.

    After all, it is relieving to hear that philosophers are concerned about peace, regardless of whether or not achieving it is in their power.