Hannah Arendt at her best: attacking head-on a painful topic; dissenting from official wisdom; provoking argument not just among her critics but also and especially among her friends; and above all, disturbing the easy peace of the received opinion. Tony Judt
“Reading the Other” symposia are organized at the International Center for Dialogue in Krasnogruda, in the hospitable space of Miłosz’s Manor. Sessions, held in a form of dialogical seminars, are devoted to the contemporary re-reading of books by influential thinkers of the twentieth century that reflect the challenges faced by the “people of the borderland”. Each symposium has its chosen “guide of thought” whose public voice and works contribute a unique “vantage point” that changes everything (Miłosz, The Moral Treaty) . On this occasion, our guide is Tony Judt – an eminent historian and public intellectual, the author of the monumental Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945 and twelve other books.
Tony Judt initiated and was the spiritus movens for many years of the Remarque Forum, a unique platform of dialogue between Europe and America, which influenced and disturbed the easy peace of mind of many intellectuals, social activists, writers, scientists and politicians. Passionate debates held in an intimate circle of people about why “ill fares the land,” became a groundbreaking school of thinking and art of dialog. When Tony Judt visited Krasnogruda, he began to be engaged in creating an International Center for Dialogue there, which opened in June 2011, shortly after his death.
Guided by Tony Judt we will re-read Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Czesław Miłosz and Leszek Kołakowski, as well as – referring to Timothy Snyder's famous book-interview with him – the Twentieth Century. We will search for answers to the questions such as: Why are books describing the twentieth-century totalitarianisms so relevant today? Why do those craving revolution so easily oversleep revolutions? Why is it that, as Judt said, “in the wonderful new era, we will miss those tolerant, marginalized people: those people of the borderland, my natives”?
The participants of the symposium – held both in English and Polish –are “disturbers of the easy peace” from Ukraine, Lithuania, the United States, Great Britain and Poland.