The conference brought together Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Belarusian philosophers. Krzysztof Czyżewski was one of the panelists and he gave a lecture “Europe’s New East or the Courage of Utopia”
The aim of the conference was a philosophical reconceptualization of the category of Eastern Europe as a particular cultural form, i.e., a specifically determined way of living, experiencing, and self-understanding, localized in a certain space. The existing geographical, political, economic and even culturalist categorizations seem to be incoherent, often mixing criteria brought together from completely different dimensions. It is of the utmost importance to provide/work out a set of philosophical concepts that will allow us to gain a deeper insight into the category in question; and either to maintain and defend it or cross it out from our vocabularies as no longer relevant. Provisionally, what we want to understand as Eastern Europe are the countries which are situated at the outskirts of what is commonly called Western Europe and as such, for centuries and until today, they have been constantly confronted with the paradoxical cultural formation that poses a constant deadly threat to all neighboring states and ethnicities, i.e., Russia.
In order to see the details of the conference, see here.
(this entry is based on the official entry from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw)