Conference Report

by Richard Allen

14th International Conference on Persons

University of Calabria, Cosenza-Rende, Italy, 24th- 27th May 2017

This Conference, the 14th in the biennial series begun in 1991 and alternating between the USA and Europe, was organised by Giusy Gallo, a member of the Forum, and was held in the campus of the University, which is in the newer and larger part of Rende and is a northern extension of Consenza.

Nearly 50 people attended (probably the largest number so far), including 6 invited speakers. Only Randall (‘Randy’) Auxier, the unofficial leader of the unofficial committee which arranges these conferences, represented the mostly American ‘Old Guard’ connecting the conferences to the original stream of American Personalism descending from Borden Parker Bowne, at the end of the 19th C.

5 plenary sessions and a wealth of individual papers meant that the latter had to be accommodated in sessions of 3 parallel groups of 2 or 3 speakers and their papers, with 2 groups of 2 speakers. Hence we all had to make choices, sometimes difficult ones, as to which to attend.

The only real disappointments that I experienced were a panel of 3 invited speakers on ‘The Multilayered Person’ who turned out to be not to be personalists at all. But the members of all societies devoted to a particular person, group or movement of thought, too often simply talk to each about their common interest, instead of developing it and talking to outsiders. The other disappointment was the definitely impersonalist location of the final sessions on the morning of the 27th. It consisted of 2 long, uniform 5-storey buildings built solely of metal and glass, and linked by a wide metallic walk- and road-way at the level of the 3rd storey, and was like a scene out of some science-fiction film which would have been populated by robots and robotic humans. Even the furniture in the rooms was made of metal.

An unexpected bonus were the pastries, cakes, fruit and drinks serve at the mid-morning and afternoon breaks, and also, with something hot, at lunchtime, all included in the Registration fee.

Several papers were historical, persons and themes such as Hume, Locke, Aquinas and Scholasticism, Augustine, Aelred of Rievaulx, Socrates in the Republic, Confucius in relation to Christian Personalism, and ancient Egypt. Others dealt with a variety of contemporary persons and themes. Those by members of the Forum were: Daniel Gustavson (from Sweden but resident in York) on ‘The Language of Being: Divine and Personal Hiddenness’, followed very appropriately by Henrieta Serban on ‘Lucian Blaga: the Human Being destined for Mystery, Creativity and Knowledge’, with myself as chairman; Ferenc Mújdricza (Hungary) on ‘“The Leap of Courage”—Death, Anxiety and Social Trust’; James Beauregard (USA, by Skype) on ‘’Forgetting and remembering Ourselves: Techné and the rule of metaphor’; and, in a plenary session on Michael Polanyi, with Randy Auxier on aesthetics and Polanyi, Endre Nagy (Hungary) on ‘A Concept of the Self based on the Theory of Michael Polanyi’, and myself on ‘Why Personalism needs the Free Market’. Also present was our Swedish friend, Jan Olaf Bengtsson who did not offer a paper but rejoined the Forum; Diane Prokofyeva from Russia, who came to our Conference last year in York, and who spoke on ‘Modern Human and a Problem of Existential Estrangement’

Of particular interest were Michele Marchetto (Italy), ‘“Selfhood” and Person: John Henry Newman compared with Paul Ricoeur’, and Eleanor Godway (in the USA, a former member of the Forum who will rejoin) on ‘John Macmurray on the “Personal” as involving a “Practical Contradiction”’. I was disappointed that Anna Jellamo (Italy) was absent and so did not give her paper on ‘The Concept of Person in the Thought of T. H. Green’. Aelred of Rievaulx, Green and Newman should be added to our incomplete list of British Contributors to Personalist Philosophy. I’ll contact the authors about this. Several people, including a post-graduate student at Keble Coll., Oxford, took our leaflet and said they would join. I shall gently remind them, if necessary.

Altogether, it provided a varied and interesting programme, and friendly company from at least a dozen countries, but, as with all good things, it was too short.

Outside the Conference itself, on the last evening some of us went down to the old part of Cosenza with narrow streets and a mediaeval cathedral. I arranged with Fr Terence Kennedy, from Australia, a Professor Emeritus, who lives and teaches at the Accademia Alfonsiana, a part of the Lateran University in Rome, and a former member of the original Convivium group and subscriber to Appraisal, to meet me at Ciampiano airport, on my arrival on the evening of the 23rd, and then in the morning of the 28th and to show me around the oldest parts of the city It is unlikely that we shall meet again. But he will join the Forum and we shall keep in touch. The long journeys by train from Rome, via Naples to Cosenza and return, were very cheap and well worth the chance to see something of the Italian coast and countryside.

R.T. Allen, BA, BD, MEd, PhD, has taught Philosophy of Education at Colleges in England and Nigeria, and at The University of the West Indies (Trinidad). He has published 6 books on philosophy, edited or co-edited 3 others, and translated one from the Spanish. His main interests are Michael Polanyi, R.G. Collingwood, Max Scheler, St Augustine and Personalism generally. His current work is a summary and extension of previous work on axiology, ethics, poltics, and philosophical theology, which uses Collingwood's 'scales of forms' applied to types of wholes, for a metaphysical structure of an active and relational ontology and cosmology, culminating in the radical uniqueness of the individual person, and a thoroughly personalist theology of Christian theism.