2024 will mark the 150th year since Nicolas Berdyaev’s birth. On 12–14 June 2024 the Krakow Meetings on Russian Philosophy and the Northwestern University Research Initiative for the Study of Russian Philosophy and Religious Thought will sponsor a conference commemorating Berdyaev and assessing his philosophical legacy in Russia and the West. The conference will be held at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland.

Among the most influential of Russian philosophers, Berdyaev had an exceptional role in promoting the development of Russian philosophy, both in Russia and in the West after his exile in 1922. In Russia, having travelled the path “from Marxism to idealism”, he became one of the main organizers of the Russian religious renaissance. In 1916, he published The Meaning of the Creative Act, which he regarded as his most important work. In European exile, he led the “Paris school” of Russian émigré religious thought and edited its journal, The Way (1925–1940). His international fame spread with a whole series of books, beginning with The New Middle Ages (1924). Subsequent works, such as The Destiny of Man (1931) and Slavery and Freedom (1939), established Berdyaev as a leading European philosopher of Christian existentialism and personalism. In works like The Origin of Russian Communism (1937) and The Russian Idea (1946), he deepened Western understanding of Russian culture and intellectual history. Through his friendship with Jacques Maritain, he played a part in the twentieth-century history of human rights.

This conference will explore Berdyaev’s multifaceted importance as one of the major philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century.

• Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland
• Northwestern University Research Initiative for the Study of Russian Philosophy and Religious Thought

• Prof. Sr Teresa Obolevitch (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland)
• Prof. Randall Poole (College of St. Scholastica, USA)
• Prof. Ana Siljak (University of Florida, USA)

• Dr. Paweł Rojek (Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland)
• Prof. Gennadii Aliaiev (Poltava, Ukraine)
• Prof. Daniela Steila (University of Turin, Italy)
• Prof. Marina F. Bykova (North Carolina State University, USA)

• “Studies in East European Thought” (SEET)

• Julia Kuznetsova (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland)
• Ilias Stanekzai (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland)