April 2023 Symposium
What’s New about the New Atheism? The Enduring Relevance of Russian Philosophy
Inaugural Conference of the Northwestern University Research Initiative
in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought (NU RPLRT Research Initiative)
April 21–23, 2023
Evanston, Illinois
The debates between the “new atheists” and their critics involve fundamental questions about the nature of reality and how it can be known. The new atheists assert that reality consists exclusively of the natural universe and is accessible to science alone. Their critics claim that reality cannot be reduced to nature, that there is more than the material, and that the scientific method is not the only way of knowing reality. These debates are not new. Much of the style and substance of the new atheists can be found in the materialist writings of the radical Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century, who likewise appointed themselves the task of enforcing boundaries among science, art, and religion.
The assaults on art and religion—on any claim to truth, value, or meaning that does not rest on materially demonstrable evidence—launched by the Russian intelligentsia and the new atheists have elicited powerful rebuttals, then and now. Great works of Russian literature were produced by novelists like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Leskov, all of whom refused to be reconciled to a world without soul, beauty, or transcendence. By the twentieth century, their spiritual quests, and similar ones in other areas of Russian culture, blossomed into the Russian religious-philosophical renaissance, which recognized that the search for the transcendent had lost none of its meaning in the secular, modern age. Of particular relevance today is the argument, featured in the notable 1909 collection Landmarks (Vekhi), that an idealist or spiritual worldview not only is compatible with liberalism (human rights upheld by the rule of law), but provides a firmer foundation for it than does positivism. According to this view, religion is not the enemy of human progress, only certain appropriations of it.
The NU RPLRT Research Initiative fosters scholarship about the global relevance of Russian philosophy and religious thought. This conference will focus attention on how Russian writers—artists, philosophers, and religious thinkers—have reflected on the fate of the transcendent in modernity. We invite papers exploring any aspect of this topic, including the role of faith and reason in human self-understanding, in social philosophy, and in the search for an integral worldview. Conference participants should aim to produce papers suitable (in their final form) for publication in Northwestern University Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought, an online platform that will exist in two forms, an annual journal and a “research series” for works longer than journal articles.
The NU RPLRT Research Initiative is grateful to both the N.W. Harris Fund and WCCIAS for helping to sponsor the conference.
NU RPRT Research Initiative Evanston Conference Program
NU RPRT Research Initiative Evanston Conference Flyer