On December 28, 2020, The New Yorker has published the key analytics for the outgoing year, entitled “The Plague Year.” The tragic character of global and national forecasts for combatting the pandemic cannot but cloud people's mindset on the eve of the holidays. Politics and illness have intertwined. All spheres of human life were struck by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
COVID19 has instantly altered the vector, priorities and goals of science and scientific activity. However, Niccolò Machiavelli has long ago stated that “Every change paves the way for other changes.” We hope that 2020 will be remembered as the beginning of a new era of humanism, creativity, talents, technology and innovation, rather than a year of pain, threats and disappointments.
Apparently, amidst the fluctuating pandemic waves, the issue of the prospects for humanity has actualized the genesis of projects aimed at foresight and the development of roadmaps, including those based on the construction of history and the future of state and law.
The International Scientific-Methodological Seminar “History of Legal Science: Transformation of Ideas and Images,” became a project of this sort for the Department of History of State and Law of the Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL). It aimed to present legal reality as a spacetime continuum that we are all a part of, to break through dogmatic boundaries and to use a wide range of historic material to demonstrate the ambiguity inherent in the essence of the law at different stages of its formation, where the past inexplicably coexists with the future, the imminent tomorrow of state and law.
On December 2 and 4, 2020 the II International Scientific-Methodological Seminar “History of Legal Science: Transformation of Ideas and Images” — “Mythologems of Law: Irrational in Law” was conducted as a satellite event of the XVIII Kutafin Readings.
Academic Director of the project is Igor Isaev, Head, Department of History of State and Law of the Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), Distinguished Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Science (Law), Professor (Russia).
The discussion was moderated by:
— Valentina Rumyantseva, Associate Professor, Department of History of State and Law of the Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), Candidate of Sciences (Law), Associate Professor (Russia);
— Gianluigi Segalerba, Expert-Analyst, Italian Press; Secretary for Mass Media, International Advisory Board of Alternative Perspectives and Global Concerns; Member, Working Group Cultural Analysis of the University of Vienna, PhD (Austria).
The interactive Zoom-based seminar gathered participants from 10 countries: Austria, France, India, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Palestine, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Tajikistan. The contributors were specialists in various fields: legal science, philosophy, cultural studies, political science, sociology, history, architecture, etc. The interdisciplinary nature of the seminar allowed these professionals to join their efforts to obtain multidimensional objective scientific knowledge and elaborate traditional and innovative instruments for the optimization of state and law in connection with the digital transformation of the entire planet.
On December 20 and 27, 2020 in the framework of the continuing II International Scientific-Methodological Seminar and collaboration with the project “Swadhyaya Sahachakra Dialogues” by Ananta Kumar Giri, Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies; Founder, Honorary Executive Trustee, Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming (World Nest Center for Asian Blossoming), PhD (India), Valentina Rumyantseva made the following reports at two seminars:
— “Civil Society in the Modern World: in Search of Justice and Solidarity,”
— “Civil Society and the Justice of Power (Using the Example of Mikhail Lermontov's Poem Death of a Poet).”
Learn more about the International Scientific Practical Conference of the Department of History of State and Law:
+7-929-990-56-20 (WhatsApp)
lhf-talks@mail.ru
The full versions of both International Scientific-Methodological Seminars are available at:
Mythologems of Law: Irrational in Law, December 4, 2020
Mythologems of Law: Irrational in Law, December 2, 2020
History of Legal Science: Transformation of Ideas and Images, June 23, 2020
