Scientists from MASU and Hungary will carry out a joint research on the migration of philosophical traditions
- 18.05.2020
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The scientific project launched by the dean of the Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences and Social Security Law at MASU, Associate Professor, Alexander Sautkin, was approved by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR). The project «Migration of ideas and formation of national philosophical traditions: dialogues above borders» is among the dozen winners of the contest held by RFBR in association with the Hungarian Foundation for the Russian Language and Culture that had to make their choice among 20 basic research projects.
Studies of philosophical aspects of borders and cross-border cooperation have been carried out at MASU for quite a long time. International Kant-Bakhtin seminars organised in cooperation with Nord University (Bodo, Norway) have been held at the university annually since 2013. Alexander Sautkin is a regular head of the seminar’s working group and a scientific editor of the collection of articles following the seminars — seven such collection have been published by now.
«Many western scholars are interested in this field, not only our Norwegian colleagues we’ve launched our «Borderology» project with,» Alexander Sautkin says, «For many years I’ve been trying to forge links with scholars from various countries. To establish a network of constant scientific contacts is crucial, but it requires a close acquaintance and an immediate cooperation with scholars belonging to various scientific traditions. It is mutually beneficial in purely scientific terms, but also it helps to organise joint research projects, scientific events and publications.»
Alexander Sautkin says that regularly taking part in international scientific conferences in Lithuania, Poland and Hungary he has come into contact with philosophers, sociologists, culturelogists and geographists from various countries. He is in a particularly close contact with the Lithuanian scholars and when his Lithuanian colleagues organised a joint international scientific conference with their Hungarian partners they invited Alexander as well.
«I got acquainted with scholars from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Bela Meshter and Gabor Kovach,» Alexander Sautkin says, «and the next year Bela Meshter took part in the sixth Kant-Bakhtin seminar held at MASU, then on autumn 2019 we decided to seize the opportunity to apply for a joint research project.»
The three-year-long project is aimed to explore one of the major issues of the contemporary humanities — the interrelation between national and universal components of culture and thought. The scholars are planning to approach the issue by studying how crossborder migration of people and ideas provides the interaction between national philosophical traditions and gradually changes the fundamental aspects of each. The aim of the international research group is to discover general mechanisms and specific features of how the Russian and Hungarian national philosophies developed during the modern era.