Posted 05 June 2009
UCD Professor elected President of Programme Committee for World Congress of Philosophy
Professor Dermot Moran has been elected President of the Programme Committee for the 23rd World Congress of Philosophy which is scheduled to take place in Athens in 2013.
In the elected post, he will chair an expert Committee to decide all aspects of the academic programme for the 23rd World Congress. The Committee will include five international philosophers and five philosophers from Greece.
The World Congress of Philosophy is organised by the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (its acronym FISP reflects the official French name, Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie).
FISP is the highest non-governmental world organisation for philosophy, established at the International Congress of Philosophy in Amsterdam in 1948, as part of an initiative of UNESCO. Its main objectives include the development of professional relations between philosophers of all countries, fostering contacts between institutions, societies, producing periodical publications dedicated to philosophy, and promoting philosophy internationally. FISP sponsors a World Congress of Philosophy every 5 years.
Professor Dermot Moran MRIA, UCD School of Philosophy, has been involved in FISP since the 1980s, and was first elected to the Steering Committee / Comité Directeur of FISP at the Istanbul Congress in 2003 for a 5 year term (2003-2008), assisting in organising the Seoul Congress. In 2008, at Seoul, he was re-elected for a second 5-year term (2008-2013). At the most recent meeting of the FISP Steering Committee held in Ischia, Italy, he was elected President of the Programme Committee.
A graduate of UCD and Yale University, Professor Moran is internationally known primarily for his work on phenomenology and on the history of philosophy (especially medieval Neoplatonism). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Advanced Research in Phenomenology (USA) and of the Advisory Board of the Archive for Phenomenology & Contemporary Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (China). He has previously served as President of the Mind Association (UK). He is currently Co-Editor of the Contributions to Phenomenology book series published by Springer (Dordrecht, Netherlands).
The first International Congress of Philosophy was held in Paris in 1900 on the occasion of the “Universal Exhibition”. Among the participants were Henri Bergson, Maurice Blondel, M. Cantor, L. Couturat, H. Poincaré, and Bertrand Russell.
The second International Congress took place in Geneva in 1904; the third was in Heidelberg, 1908 (with Josiah Royce, W. Windelband and Benedetto Croce). Thereafter congresses have been held in Bologna (1911), Naples (1924), Prague (1929; 1934), Königsberg (1930), Paris (1935; 1937), Copenhagen (1936), Cambridge (1938), and Cambridge, Massachusetts (1939). The Second World War disrupted the meetings, but after the war they were taken over by FISP. Recent congresses have taken place in Brighton (1988), Moscow (1993), Boston (1988), and Istanbul (2003). The 2008 Congress was held in Asia for first time in Seoul, Korea.
