Thinking in Dark Times. Lessons from Ukraine. - Volodymyr Yermolenko at IWM in Vienna
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What lessons can we draw from the Ukrainian experience? Why is Ukraine not only a place of suffering and fight, but also a place of thinking and creation? Why is the Ukrainian cultural renaissance so strong during the war? What does it mean to think in dark times?

My name is Volodymyr Yermolanko. I'm a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of Ukraine World and the president of Pan-Ukraine. This episode of the Thinking in Dark Times podcast is a recording of my lecture at the Institute for Human Sciences, Institute Fugdi Wissenschaften from Menschen in Vienna on May 6th, 2025. I thank the Institute as well as its permanent fellow and the moderator of this event, Ludger Hagedorn, for this opportunity.

Thinking Dark Times is a podcast series of Ukraine World, an English language media outlet about Ukraine. It is run by Internews Ukraine. You can support our work on Patreon. The link is in the description. Your support is crucial for us as we rely a lot on crowdfunding. You can also support our volunteer trips to the frontline areas in Ukraine where we deliver support for both soldiers and civilians. You can donate via PayPal. The link is in the description. So let's begin.

I try to see the light through and despite the darkness. This is a key sentence and I guess a very strong quote from the intro of a podcast series. A podcast series that has the same title as the talk tonight, Thinking in Dark Times.

And to this podcast series you can listen on Spotify and other platforms where it is available. And the author of this podcast series is here sitting next to me, Volodymyr Yermolenko.

And I might say not only welcome, but welcome back to Vienna and to the Institute for Human Sciences, Volodymyr. It's very nice to have you back here. We are proud to host this event with you. And I think Volodymyr deserves an applause.

I am Ludger Hagedorn, Permanent Fellow here at the Institute for Human Sciences. And it's very good also that you are joining us. It was the right decision to join us tonight. Volodymyr is a very interesting person to speak to, as you will notice soon.

and a very valuable source of information, all information regarding Ukraine. And I do not mean it just in a positivistic sense of a news agency, but somebody who does the very important job of evaluating, assessing, contextualizing information about Ukraine. That is very much his job.

You see written here on the announcement what he is doing, a philosopher and essayist. But next to that, let me say that Volodymyr is the chief editor of Ukraine World, a multimedia initiative that began during Euromaidan in 2013-2014.

and a very important and relevant source and platform of information about Ukraine today. Volodymyr is also president of the Ukrainian Pen Club, a winner of the Pyotr Mohyla Award 2021,

And I said a philosopher. He also has a degree in philosophy, but he also is a doctor of political studies and a senior lecturer at Kiev Mohyla Academy. This is the things that you can read about him.

Two more things I would like to mention. One is the very interesting fact that Volodymyr was actually what is a rare happening, born into a family of philosophers. Your mother is a philosopher and your father is a philosopher and he became a philosopher. My children are philosophers. They will be philosophers as well. So it's a dynasty, philosopher dynasty. Well, that's you who framed it like that.

And now it's just a thing that I remember very well, Volodymyr, from your first day at the Institute. And I said, welcome back. You were a fellow here at the Institute in 2021. And I remember us having a talk then in 2021. And this was an interesting fact that somehow stayed in my mind that you're coming from this philosopher's family.

And more importantly, I think this is also very important to Volodymyr himself because he likes to state it. It's very important to mention this. He is living in Ukraine and I mean this is also important

needed to say as a statement you are living in Ukraine you have decided to live in Ukraine and you're very often traveling also to the war zones to keep in contact and what you're doing there you will tell us I will not tell us but I think this is a very valuable and important piece of information for the beginning thinking in dark times lessons from Ukraine

And another very strong thing that you say in your podcast Volodymyr, and with this I give you a start, you say it is not only pain and emotions and courage coming from Ukraine, but we should also make clear that there's also thinking coming from Ukraine and this is what you're doing. Volodymyr, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you colleagues for being here.

I'm very modest to be in such a place. For me it's a kind of a... I know how the hell looks like. Probably it's one of the images of a paradise. So I was indeed here three years ago, three and a half years ago. And I'm very happy to come back.

I do live in Ukraine. My family lives in Ukraine. We're living in Kiev, in Kiev suburb, Porovary. But indeed, as Ludgird said, we are very often traveling to the front lines with Pan-Ukraine or just with my wife, Tetyana Harkova, who is a very also prominent...

author and we're actually going to publish a book about the war this year in Ukrainian and next year in French. We'll see about other languages as well. Last Saturday, not this Saturday, but last Saturday because I came here from United States, but before that I was in Kherson. We traveled there with Pan Ukraine.

Kherson is a city, as you might know, literally on the front line, on the bank of Dnipro river, the biggest regional center which was occupied by the Russians in this full-scale invasion, then liberated by Ukrainians in November 2022.

And since then Kherson is a city which is constantly bombarded by the Russian troops through artillery but also through drones. As you might know, this is increasingly a drone war. And it's a dangerous place. So after 3 p.m. you basically can really see people on the streets because people are hiding in their houses.

But despite that, we made two cultural events there. We made an event for children. We brought two Ukrainian prominent children writers, Ivan Andrusiak and Olya Rusyana, and they made an amazing event for children. Children are living in Kherson despite all that. And as Ivan Andrusiak said after this meeting, they seem more mature than other kids in other places.

The last time, the previous time we came to Kherson, we were talking about this story with Tetyana, who is a director of the children's library, about two adolescents whose mother was killed in one of the shelling. And these adolescents were coming very regularly to this library. So it's all interconnected, the books reading,

Because we actually, I'm very happy that we are in this library because at Pan-Ukraine we actually do a lot of travels to bring books to the frontline libraries. There are about 600 libraries which are damaged or destroyed in this war by...

many of them are in schools, many of them are just local libraries and villages. And therefore we see as our mission to go and to bring books. Because people need books during these dark times. People need to read, people are very hungry for books. We bring mostly books in Ukrainian and English.

So this was a kids event. Another event that we held was actually a poetic musical performance that we held underground in the underground library because at PEN Ukraine we very often practice the

the interconnection of arts and primarily the literature, philosophy and music. So it's a paradox but key philosophers

are musicians. So there are seven or eight of them. I play the keys, Wachtan Keboladze plays the guitar, Wadym Medzhulin, the head of our Department of Philosophy at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, plays saxophone and flute, and there are others who are playing other instruments. Taras Luty, the best Nietzsche specialist, plays the guitar and sings. So we kind of have this, I even called it once, Kyiv Philosophy Band.

And the word band really means that this is a band in all the senses of the term. So we started this genre of bringing music and poetry and philosophy together. So, Lutger, if we had this conversation in Kyiv, there would be somebody at the corner playing the bass, you know?

Unfortunately we cannot offer that here. Had we known before, I would have tried. And what is remarkable is that we thought how we bring this format of conversation and poetry reading with the music to the other cities. And we decided to start with Kherson.

And it was a very, very important experience. There were great poets that were with us. One of them was, he's actually a soldier, Yaryna Chernohus. It was Kateryna Kalitko, Svetlana Povalyaeva, Iya Kiva. These are great, great poets. Ivan Andrusiak as well.

So this is to tell you why I'm telling you this, because despite the shelling, despite the war, we have this kind of renaissance of culture in Ukraine. So people want to read books, people come to poetry meetings, readings, people come to book presentations. We have new bookstores which are being opened. The theatre performances in Kyiv are very difficult to get to.

And it's a paradox and therefore I'm thinking in these terms that when there is darkness there is always a light that is present there. And this talk is supposed to be more philosophical than the talk about empirical, but of course I'm ready to answer your questions about empirical reality as well.

When I'm thinking about this metaphor of dark times, people always think about Hannah Arendt and her men in dark times. But when I was coming with this metaphor, I was rather thinking in terms of painting. I was rather thinking in terms of what people in art history call chiaroscuro, so the light through the darkness.

I can say this is one of the most interesting type of painting for me as a philosopher. The painting of Caravaggio, of Rembrandt, of Van Hornhorst, of de la Tour. And interestingly our major poet, Ukrainian major poet Taras Shevchenko was also a painter. He also worked in these techniques very often. Why I'm thinking about this chiaroscuro metaphor? Because

In a way you can say that you can see the light only when there is darkness. You can see the presence of light only when there is darkness. In fact, during the war there are things that you start seeing very, very clearly. I asked the question of foreigners who come to Ukraine and there are very many of them and we often drive them to the frontline if they want.

So we actually had a very, very interesting and strong meeting with Timothy Snyder in Kharkiv, also underground. And you can also find it on Ukraine World Podcast. This was a very interesting conversation around his book on freedom. We traveled to Kherson with one of the key French writers, Emmanuel Carrère.

and one very interesting American intellectual, David Reeve, the son of Susan Sontag.

So there are many, many people like that. We made ones with Pen Ukraine and it was Tytiano Harkov who was organizing. We made poetry readings, French poetry readings in the underground in Kharkiv. So it was like... And the French writers were reading in French and we were reading, Tytiano was reading their translations in Ukrainian. And there were crowds of people. It's always the crowds of people.

Timothy can confirm to you that during his presentation it was a crowd of people on the ground in Kharkiv. So, when I'm thinking about this metaphor, I'm thinking about this idea that basically... Yeah, and when foreigners come, when we ask them: "So what are you actually searching in Ukraine?" They're saying: "Very often we search for authenticity, we search for a reality in which there are no games anymore."

then people are not playing anymore. And we have one, our friend, which is a very brave soldier who lost his hand during one of the operations. And when we asked like, what is the reality on the frontline? He told us, yeah, like in the same metaphors, this metaphor was more rude. I will not quote it to you, but the sense was that it's not a place to play anymore.

So I think that this metaphor actually is very, very important. And when I'm looking at the history of culture, one of the ways I'm... It was quite a long time ago when I stopped looking at history at all in terms of progress. So I'm rather a person who would agree with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said, who was very skeptical about the possibility of moral progress as a result of technological progress.

And therefore, when the full-scale invasion started, many people in the West started asking questions: "So how is it possible in the 21st century?" And many Ukrainians were asking: "When did you start thinking the 21st century was better than the 20th century or the 19th century? What led us to this conclusion?" And basically, what led us to a conclusion that we overcome the evil?

that we overcome, finally overcome violence and the dark sides of human nature.

And I think these are very important things to think about. So basically, when I thought about this conversation and this talk, I was thinking about what ideas do I have as a Ukrainian? What ideas can I share with you that are not necessarily related only to Ukraine, that can tell us something about humans?

And of course it will not be ideas that I suggest to you as my final ideas, it's just suggestions for a discussion, because I think it's not only Ukrainian experience, but every experience of being in a situation, of basically meeting with death and nothingness, this is the reality of the war, it creates a certain new type of thinking.

And when we think about Hannah Arendt, Ludger, I don't know if you agree with me, but basically, I think in the German context, the generation of people who went through the war, like Karl Jaspers or Hannah Arendt,

overshadowed by the generation of people who came after the war. People like Habermas, whom I respect of course very much, and my father is a big specialist of Habermas, and there is an interesting conversation between my father and him about this war. But basically, when we entered into a more optimistic kind of ontology, then probably we started missing something important.

So my thinkers who lead my thinking are rather people like Blaise Pascal, people like Montaigne, skeptics, people who don't have grand theories, people with rather fragmented thinking, but people who are aware of the presence of darkness, aware of the presence of evil.

The second word which I would like to convey to you is the word "despite". So when I'm asked to describe Ukraine in a few sentences, I'm usually very often asked to do it, I'm telling, I will describe Ukraine in one word.

And this is the word despite. What I mean by that is the idea that life is possible despite the presence of death, that love is possible despite the presence of hatred, that joy is possible despite the presence of suffering, and so on. So the word despite means that you're living in a situation when some things seem to be impossible, but then they are there, they are created, they are felt.

And I think this is a very, very important concept for me because it plays with this concept of impossible. Like people sometimes feel very strange when they are, for example, the...

When people join our minivan, which is going to frontline places, and usually in this minivan of writers there are lots of joy and lots of laughter, despite the fact that with some people there you can have people who lost their very close friends and family members. And I think this is one of the ways also to look at it, is that

In fact, the reality of war is the reality of extremes. So you feel the extreme pain, but you can also feel the extreme joy. You feel, yes, you feel extreme hatred, but you can also feel extreme love. And this is the reality where basically the middle ground probably disappears, but also the mediocrity also disappears.

there are good things about it and there are bad things about it but i feel it very very interesting and important and the literature ukrainian literature which i think now is very very interesting especially the ukrainian poetry it's it's very often the literature about life despite death and about life love despite despite hatred and about this

empathy, the increased level of empathy despite the situation around. The next concept, the next problem about which I'm thinking about is the problem of evil. So during the war you cannot stop thinking about evil and you cannot, I think it's also a question like

were we okay when we kind of relativized evil, when we relativized the question of evil in the 20th century?

when for example in the 20th century you had this thinking saying okay but morality has its little field and there are other fields like the politics the political is is an autonomous field or the aesthetics is the autonomous field and morality should not intervene into this field so basically if we take political politics we we are thinking about

all this line from Machiavelli to Carl Schmitt. And when we think about aesthetics, we probably think about all the aesthetics from the Romanticism to the Modernism.

But then I feel that this relativization of evil is very problematic. I'm also kind of in struggle a little bit with the famous concept of Hannah Arendt, of banality of evil. I think the concept of banality of evil doesn't give us a response to what evil is. I feel like she was, I understand what she was trying to do, but I feel like she was trying to

impose the aesthetic view on the moral question. So the banality is basically, for me, it's a concept from aesthetics. Banal opposed to interesting. We try to be interesting in the modern art, modern culture. When I look at this war, when I look to this Russia, I feel that not every evil is banal.

So you can definitely have evil which is interesting. It's not being banal or interesting that makes evil evil. And here another important point from Hannah Arendt is the idea of radical evil and the idea that well what is evil is when

something makes people superfluous. I think it's a very important concept and I think this is something... It's an epoch in which we are entering, like all the dictators are thinking in terms that

They're trying to overcome all this legacy of the 20th century when every individual has a meaning, when every individual has a place on earth in society. They're trying to make us superfluous, they're trying to make us replaceable. And I think this is something very important to reflect upon. Another thing which I'm thinking about is something that I called recently

or maybe some other people called it. I didn't Google this term yet. But I think it's important to look at these nihilistic ideologies which we're now having from the Kremlin, which probably some elements are also present in the Trumpism. And by thanatocracy, I mean the attempt to rule by death. It's an attempt to consider death as a management tool.

to consider death as a tool through which and by which you actually manage people. We know from Montesquieu that the despots, the tyrants rule by fear. But then I ask a question: how do you produce fear? How do the tyrants produce fear? Fear needs to be produced in large quantities. And you produce fear basically by producing death.

And this is, I think, something very important for us to understand that many tyrannies in history, and I think that the Putinist tyranny is one of them, are trying to rule by death, by producing death, and by saying that "I own your death".

"Your death belongs to me." And this is, I think, something that we still misunderstand about Stalinism. So why there was such a crazy wave of purchases, purges, in the situation when basically Stalin already had the full power in late 1930s. Somebody says it's paranoia, somebody says this and that. I try to explain it differently. I try to explain it like

When you persuade other people that you own their death, then they are very frightened. Because, well,

One of the little elements of freedom is to understand that probably we will die on our own. We will decide when we will die. Or the nature will decide. Or the God will decide. But then you have one person who says, I will decide when you will die. And if you look at the rhetoric of Putin, how he justifies this war, he kind of gives...

Russian citizens different ways to die. He gives a choice of dying, of the way of dying. You can die as an alcoholic in your village or you can die as a hero on the frontline. And I think this is a very important thing for us to understand how the tyrannies work because

We kind of, when I say we, people who are educated in the European philosophy of the 20th century, we are very much educated in such concepts as biopolitics, Foucault and everything, like the way how you control life, how you shape life, how you give form to life, maybe too much external form.

But then there is something which has to do not with life but with death and I think it's important to think about it. The next concept, and I think we also need to start rethinking it, and I'm sure lots of smart people do it. I don't have much time to read a lot of books when I drive to the front line or when I'm doing lots of other work, but I will just suggest you these ideas. I think the imperialism concept is not very well thought.

Because, again, people tend to look at imperialism through certain lenses, the lenses of the European imperialisms, mostly. And through these lenses, imperialism is seen primarily as a capitalist idea, as a product of capitalism. So there is, of course, the shadow of Lenin saying that imperialism is the latest stage of capitalism and all the rest.

While people of course started to reflect it in the past decades, but I still think that it's not sufficient. How we think about other forms of capitalism? Why we think that imperialism is a product of capitalism? Why we don't think that imperialism is rather a product of human nature? And it can be a product of capitalism, it can be capitalist, it can be communist.

How you understand this Stalinist imperialism with regard to many, many nations in the Soviet world? How you understand it if you apply only capitalist framework on it, like resource exploitation, etc. I think you fail to understand it. Another very important idea for me is that

If we look at imperialism only as imperialism of maritime powers, we are looking at imperialism only as a kind of imperialism based upon racism. And it's a very, very important thing. But if you look at Russian imperialism towards Ukrainians or Belarusians, for example, then another element is playing. I would call it an element of assimilation. What I mean by that is that

If you're colonizing the distant people, you're saying you're different than me, you will never become the same as me. If you're colonizing the close people, I mean ethnically, culturally, you're saying you're the same as me, you will never become different than me.

So it's not the idea of difference, unsurmountable difference, which is the tool of domination and power, but rather the idea of sameness. And therefore if you understand this idea, then you understand that all the difference, everything which is produced difference is considered as a deviation.

and then you understand the logic a little bit of russian war against ukraine because the logic of russian war against ukraine is the logic that you ukrainians are the same as us and everything which in which you're trying to say that you are different than us is actually a deviation from the norm is deviation from the norm of the let's say russianness another thing about which i i'm also reflecting is uh

The different perspectives on the Second World War. I mean, the Second World War is really at the center of the Russian ideology, as we know. But again, there is a different perspective on it from the point of Western Europe and from the point of Central and Eastern Europe. And it leads me back to the question of evil, because for the Western Europe,

My hypothesis is that the end of the Second World War was considered as the victory of the good against the evil. While for Central and Eastern Europe, the end of the Second World War was interpreted as, and is interpreted by many intellectuals, like Ukrainian intellectuals and others, as the victory of one evil against another one.

In a way, if you look at also through the lens of imperialism and de-imperialization, the Second World War and the process that started with it are seen as the processes that kick-started the de-imperialization. While for the Central and Eastern Europe, the end of the Second World War kick-started the process of re-imperialization. So, the de-imperialization process took place after the First World War and then it was undone after the Second World War.

And when we think about this, we understand that the whole difference of perspectives and the whole difference of the situations, because you might say that for the Western Europe, the key question, and Ludger, I'm sure you will disagree with me, but maybe you will agree, I don't know. But the key question, like the German reflection about this is like,

how we prevent evil. Evil is in the past and how we prevent it from coming again. But very little reflection was what do we do when evil has come back? What do we do when evil is there already? And this kind of a...

directs me to another question and I sent to Ludgier this article which I published in The Guardian which is my metaphor of Agora and Agon. So I think that all the kind of sound societies are based upon two major pillars, two major elements. One major element is the realm of conversation, the Agora, the place in which we exchange, the positive sum game, the win-win.

But there should be another element, which is the element of Argon, this ancient Greek Argon in which you fight, in which you win or lose, in which you risk, in which you increase risks. And basically the modern Western democratic societies were based upon the idea that all which is Argon, I mean primarily Europe, America probably is not that case, everything which is Argon

We leave it in the past. Why? Because fascists were thinking about society in terms of Agon. The Nazis were thinking about society in terms of Agon, like people are fighters, blah, blah, blah. And if we reject fascism and Nazism, we also should reject Agon. The warrior mentality, which I think is wrong, because in order to build a good city, the good police, you need to have walls.

And this idea that you can actually survive without walls is still very present. And I feel it the most difficult, and I think Ukrainians since 2014 feel it one of the most difficult tasks to prove that Agora is not enough.

that sometimes you need Agon, not always. If you build only Agora, you risk becoming a defenceless society. If you build only Agon, you become fascist and you know, also... So...

Being liberal and defenseless, being very defense-focused but not liberal at all for right. These are the extremes, but maybe we can find a midway between that. And that leads me to the final point, which is the question of peace. I mean, yes, for me and for many Ukrainians, I think maybe I'm expressing here the thought of many people

Europe took the peace for granted. Europe crowdfunded the peace from the United States. Europe placed a responsibility for its peace on the United States.

half of Europe, another half of Europe placed it on the Soviet Union and when the Warsaw Pact collapsed, you know, the trend was back to the United States and this is what irritated Russia. Russia basically... and we should really take... everybody is talking about disinformation and everything but sometimes we should really take literally what Russia says and in 2021 Russia literally says that it wants half of Europe.

because the retreat of NATO that they demanded means that they want half of Europe back. And when I said crowdfunded, I basically meant outsourced. So the defense of Europe was outsourced to another pillar. And there was no reflection after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, or at least it was not strong enough. It started with all these ideas of

how Macron calls it, autonomous sovereign autonomy or something like that. But it was kind of a late, late ideas and now they are urgent. And this is what I always tell Europeans, they are urgent because you have no guarantee that NATO exists. And this is what I was telling to European journalists who are coming to Ukraine in 2022.

And I was describing them the scenario when, well, imagine Trump comes to power. It was a funny element. Like there were recently Polish journalists came to Kiev and started quoting me the interview of 2022. So my interview at the time was like, okay, imagine Trump comes to power and he says he doesn't care about Europe. He withdraws from NATO. What do you do?

And another scenario which I describe right now, okay, probably the Russian troops will not go straight to Vienna or to Paris, but imagine if they attack some villages in the Baltic states or in Poland. What will happen? And unfortunately in this war, the most decisive factor is speed, how fast you move. The majority of the territories that Russia occupied in Ukraine after February 2022 were occupied in the first weeks of the war.

Because if you are prepared, especially in the drone reality, when you control the grey zone and when it's very difficult to move, it's very difficult to move. So when somebody occupies your territory, even a tiny part of your territory, even a tiny part of the sovereign territory of the European Union, it will be very difficult to get it back. So again, Europe took peace for granted. It's time to wake up.

It's not a guarantee that Americans will save Europe. Ukrainians are literally the strongest army in Europe right now. But of course Ukrainians cannot fight alone. So we do not have enough resources for that. But all that brings me to those questions that I already pointed. So chiaroscuro, maybe there is light inside this darkness. Maybe there is a chance also for Europe to become stronger.

Maybe we also have a chance to rethink imperialism in a better way. Maybe we can also balance our societies bringing the element of Agon which will balance the element of Agora. Because of course we are all for Agora, for conversation, but at some moments this conversation should be defended. Thank you very much.

Well, Volodymyr, thank you for this presentation. There's quite a number of topics that you put out there, so I think we can link up to many aspects of what you were speaking about, imperialism and war, but before we come to these big topics and maybe ardent topics, and I think there will be very many questions also from the audience, I would want to

ask you about one thing or one impression that I have from listening to you now, also listening beforehand to your podcast.

There are two things that you stress very much. There is thinking, we have it in the title of today, we have it in the title of your podcast, and you insist on there is thinking, actually thinking coming from Ukraine, there is philosophy, there is literature in Ukraine, and I can only agree, I mean, there is stunning literature from Ukraine today. This is a side aspect of what I would want to say, or interesting question, why is it right now that Ukraine has so many really

outstanding, extraordinary writers. I mean, it's really a gift, I think, in this situation. But that's just a side thing. Maybe you can also say something on that. You very much stress thinking, but what I said in my introduction in the beginning is

It is also very important for you to always stress acting and that you're doing something, that you are going to the front line, that you're active in supporting people, in supporting soldiers, in supporting civilians. Several times you mentioned Hannah Arendt, acting and thinking. I mean, it is a very important thing for her. It is already in the, one can already speak about it in the human condition, but also in their late work, very much so acting and thinking as well.

maybe two things that are very important for one thing that we want to achieve namely freedom. Freedom is the the connects of both of these ways of relating to the world acting and thinking.

In your talk, both of them were only connected at one point when you basically said, well, this acting prevents me from reading books, so acting is actually interfering with thinking. But I think there must be a much more positive way of interrelating these two agencies, acting and thinking.

This is a question that you can answer in a philosophical way. I mean, you can get back to me answering this from your philosophical understanding. How do acting and thinking interrelate? But I am also very much interested in your own work, I mean, Volodymyr Yermolenko. How do you combine these two things? And how does the one maybe help the other? How does acting support thinking and the other way around?

Well, I read less, I think more. Strangely enough. I think a lot when I'm driving through these infinite Ukrainian steps. Those of you who saw them, you understand that the step for Ukrainians is like the sea on land. This idea of infinity is there. So...

I also do think that a good society is also balancing the idea of infinity and the idea of borders. And if you go too much to the idea of borders, you become very bourgeois, very boring society. If you go to the idea of infinity too much, there are no borders, you become the invaders. Because if you don't feel the borders of others, you basically become the invaders politically or mentally or whatever else.

Look, I do think that culture in broader terms, in terms of philosophy, literature, music, is not an entertainment. This is also what we understand during the war. Culture is the basis. It's what helps people to survive sometimes. We have lots of stories. One story we've heard in Zaporizhia when a person from the occupied town of...

Polohy was calling from the underground to his friend in Zaporizhia, dictating poems on telephone. So when I heard this story, I was really so much touched by this. Sometimes we go to villages and we bring writers, we bring books,

And we tell them, "Okay, now it's your turn to tell us something." And they start reading their poems. And we understand that many people started writing poems because of the war. So it can be people in the 60s or 70s. It's also, and I think it's a very important factor. Like this is a paradox of literature because most of the writers, if you talk to them, most of my friends,

In the first months of the war, they were saying, we are silent, we are wordless, we cannot say anything. No word can express the reality. The reality is much darker, but also much lighter. In the reality, there is much more pain, but also much more love than anything we can express. But then suddenly they started writing again. And many of them started writing absolutely...

Maybe one of the most remarkable transformations is a young poet, Artur Dron, who is from Lviv, who is very young, I think 22, 23. He was recently wounded, he became a soldier. The poems that he's now writing are absolutely fantastic, sometimes very short. There are some translations you can find. So I think we need to understand that basically

Sometimes people present this Maslow pyramid in a very simplified way. The idea that first you get food, first you eat, then you dress, then you find a job, then you have sex, then you read books and then you become Nietzsche. No, it's not like that.

Usually you become Nietzsche much earlier than all the stages. Because sometimes thinking comes from this darkness, thinking comes from these very uneasy times. When I look at the big epochs of cultural epochs,

Was Shakespeare living in bright times? No, I think there is a lot of darkness in Shakespeare. There is a lot of darkness of German romanticism, which I like very much. We cannot probably understand the German transcendentalism without the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars. We cannot probably understand the European avant-garde

without the First World War, etc. We cannot probably understand the Renaissance without the plague of the 14th century. So there are lots of such things. I'm not saying that it's only in the dark times that culture is produced. No, but I'm just telling you that if you understand that there is something bad going on in other places of the world, don't think that those people only suffer. They suffer.

but they also think, they feel, they produce, they create. And it's not only about Ukraine, it's about all other places, I think. And this is what I keep saying, that these places have something to say to humanity and about humanity, not about only themselves and ourselves. I think what is interesting about Ukrainian culture right now, that we are now capable of speaking, because...

During the 20th century, if you take this Bloodlands metaphor, we can take Blood centuries, Blood decades metaphor, it's very rare. It was almost impossible for Ukrainians to write a big novel. So we have some big novels in the 1920s, and then we have it mostly from the people who left Ukraine, who were emigres, like Bahriyany or some others.

Of course, if you are living inside history, and history is always nasty, so everybody criticizes Fukuyama. No, Fukuyama just wanted happiness, you know? He understood that history is very tragic. He didn't want this tragedy to come back. He understood that it will come back, so people need to read more probably attentively what he said. But history is tragedy, and history is very unpleasant.

But it's history, so something new is being created. One interesting thing about Hannah Arendt, whom you mentioned several times, and you said that maybe it's not a direct response to her, but in some sense, obviously, her thinking is super, super present in what you're doing. What I very much like about her approach is that the title of her book is actually

people in dark times, mentioned in Finsteren Zeiten in German, people in dark times. And she is writing about, basically, about intellectuals, thinkers, writers, interesting people, let's say, of the first half of the 20th century, a very dark time indeed, and how they were confronted with the destiny of their time and what they thought about this time. It's like...

Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Jaspers, Bertolt Brecht. These are the people she's thinking about. And I find this a

Maybe it's not a question, but maybe something that is also very, very relevant, I think, for your podcast series, "Thinking in Dark Times", to speak about people in dark times and how they relate to it, Ukrainian intellectuals of today. And maybe this also brings me back to the first question that I asked you about the interdependence of thinking and acting, because all of them are in some very special way and in some very intense ways

confronted with connecting thinking and acting in their biographies. And I find this is so telling and can be so impressive to look at Ukrainian biographies of today. Well, Ukrainian biographies...

I mean, if you write a history of Ukrainian philosophy or history of Ukrainian literature, these will be primarily the histories of biographies. So it's a very underestimated element. So it's not like typical with other cultures. Sometimes we have the biography of a person which is in itself a novel.

I'm glad that you mentioned these people in Dark Times because there is Walter Benjamin also in this row and Benjamin was crucial for my development. My first book was about Benjamin.

And it's remarkable that I think how the postmodern perspective on Benjamin took the surface of him and did not understand the core that he had. And the core that he had was a very soteriological and very mystical idea. So acting, right. I didn't answer to this question.

I think what we're trying to fight against is the idea of fatalism, is that idea that we cannot change anything. It doesn't mean that we actually can change much. I think during the war you understand how little you actually can change. People in the army especially understand it because, I mean, the army is one million people and everybody is doing one little thing and it's only the collective...

work of this big, huge organism that is actually capable of changing something. But I think what Ukrainians are fighting against by this action, either by people who are actually on the front line or people like me who are not on the front line, but physically or officially, but who are very often traveling there and bringing cars to soldiers and other stuff.

I think the key thing is that it's very Kantian. It's als ob thinking, it's as if. So I should act as if I can change something. And this is very different to tyrannies in which people are very fatalistic and people do not actually think that they can change anything and in which people are feeling not responsible for that.

So this lack of responsibility, I think this is something that irritates Ukrainians. Every time when we hear Russians are saying that it's not us, it's not this, it's probably they who are on the top, they decided this and therefore... So this kind of irresponsibility or feeling that responsibility is not yours is the direct symptom that you are actually unfree. If you are saying that

somebody else is responsible is a direct symptom of you thinking about yourself as an unfree person, as a slave. Whereas, of course, freedom itself is, you can say that it's utopian because we can only be free by proving some actions that we consider to be free. We cannot have

the empiric proof that we are free because everybody can say that you were determined in this and this and this way. But as soon as we remove the hypothesis of freedom, we become irresponsible and therefore we become the people who are basically complicit with evil. So I think it's primarily this. It's this idea that...

Yeah, the idea that we should try to change at least on our square meter of our reality, we can change something. And if everybody will think that we can change something on our square meter of reality, then things can probably be changed. So it's directly related, this thinking and action are directly related to it.

together because if you're thinking these terms like not fatalistic terms then you should act in some way before we started we had a brief talk and you said the most important thing for you is to speak to the people who are present here tonight I don't want to keep you from that so let's open up floor is open for all of you comments, questions

please just wait for the mic we don't need it for the room here but for the recording please okay so when i was listening to you i got hope and what i heard is innovative hope okay hope and i heard innovation and the way i'm looking at ukraine is you have thinking in dark times i almost say thinking for real that the ukrainians are thinking for real

and they are in reality. And you mentioned that Europe in a way has outsourced its defense and it doesn't know what's coming and it's not ready for what's coming. And so I'm wondering whether inside of Ukraine things are happening that are actually very powerful and given enough time it can really change things and that actually Ukraine is a change agent.

and should think of it in those terms. We are innovators, we are the ones who are confronted with what's coming and happening, and we are a valuable resource, you know, in that sense of... So it's reality. We are in reality.

Yeah, thank you. Reality is a very important concept for me because we had this discussion yesterday at CEU and there are my colleagues here, Juliane and Fabio. And when I was going to this discussion, I had this idea that I expressed, you probably remember, that basically we are now having two powers, let's call them powers,

Putinist Russia and Trumpist America. This idea was actually very present in both American and Russian culture. The idea is that we can produce a fantasy that will be stronger than reality. And in effect they succeeded in different terms to do that.

So when you think of Russia, of Russia's political history, it's a history of how you invent a completely crazy fantasy. Like the idea of the Third Rome was a completely crazy fantasy. The idea of proletariat revolution in a country where there is no proletariat was a crazy fantasy. The idea of Russian nation in the 19th century was a crazy fantasy.

But they succeed to impose this fantasy on reality and annihilate the reality. So I think what Trump... We still didn't understand what Trump is really about. Trump is really about the constructing very virtual world and saying this is the real world. If it's not the real world, it's more fancy than the real world. You should rather cope for this.

Tariffs not working doesn't matter. I tell you it works, you should believe in this. So it's a really surrealist reality that says that

the actual reality is boring, doesn't exist and should be annihilated for the sake of this fantasy. And this is the same about Russia invading Ukraine. So everything that Russia says is fantasy, it's lie, it's everything. But Russians do not perceive the world as, it's lie, oh my God, let's find the truth. They're perceiving the world as the competition of lies. They're thinking that

the Western narrative is a lie, the democratic narrative is a lie. So they're perceiving the world as a competition of lies, and they're thinking that our lie will be stronger than yours, and we will prove that our lie will be stronger than yours. And here, yeah, I think that Ukrainians, Ukrainian reality,

The situation is different because we are very... I'm very attached to this concept of reality. And the book that I mentioned that we are publishing now with my wife, one of the key essays, it also exists in English, it's called "Enrooted in Reality". Because one of the arguments is that, well, actually what Russia is doing is the war not only against Ukraine, against Europe, democracy, blah, blah, blah, but against the reality.

And of course, all postmodern teachers of myself are very uncomfortable with the fact how I bring the word reality back, but I think it's really important. This is your Paris pastor. Yes, yes. About Ukrainians as a whole, look, we should not be idealistic about Ukraine. And I'm a person coming from Ukraine, I can tell you that

Let's not be idealistic about Ukraine. Let's not think that Ukrainians are some superheroes, super humans. Ukrainians are Ukrainians. Ukrainians are human beings. I think there is a lot in Ukraine still that I would call internal Russia. Meaning that there is a lot of...

of this idea of society which is based on violence, which is based on hierarchy, which is based on corruption, which is based upon all this. And I think it's still unknown who will beat whom. So whether internally we will be able to overcome it. So even if you imagine, and of course I strongly believe in Ukrainian victory, but it will not come very soon. I think we should all be prepared for a long, long history.

we can lose peace. We can have all our troubles, our diseases not eradicated. Therefore, the reflection upon what new Ukraine actually should be is a very strong reflection. But there is a kind of a distance between this reflection and the reality on the ground.

I'm being very honest to you, right? It's a big discussion whether the Ukrainian army is really modernizing or is now going back into the Soviet models. Because sometimes you feel that, well, it's coming back to the Soviet models. So the battle is not over. And when I'm telling you this, I'm telling you not because...

not to disappoint you, disappoint your hope. I think that hope is a very, very important word. And I think that in the Ukrainian context it's very important this phrase of Lesya Ukrainka, "Hope despite hopelessness." But we should also be realists. We should understand that, you know, that

that there is an external enemy and there is lots of problematic processes inside of Ukraine. I do think that lots of people who will survive, and I've seen these soldiers and I've seen these commanders, I mean, they will be very, very interesting, innovative, efficient, fast,

But they need to survive first. I hate to interrupt, but I have. I think there will be very many more people who would want to have their say. We continue with Tadas. Thank you for that. I'm overall on board with the way in which you try to bring in war as a condition for thinking.

and the recognition of war and of violence is something that maybe has been written out of the history of European political social thought. But there are different kinds of darkness and different kinds of thinkers and thinking in dark times. And one of them you mentioned, and that would be Carl Schmitt, who in thinking in and for dark times was trying to say that enmity is the basis of all political... Relations of enmity as a basis of...

political relations and the friend-enemy distinction is the basic political relation. And when you talk about Agon, which I'm mostly on board with you, what I also hear is I hear a thinking from the position of enmity, which is understandable.

But I would like to ask you to reflect a little bit on what thinking from the position of enmity does to the role of a philosopher and a public intellectual, and specifically what it does to thinking about the common good or a good society. What does a good society look like when thought from the position when enmity, external and from what it seems like internal as well, is accepted as a given? Thank you. It's a very hard question. Thank you for bringing it.

So I think that the popularity of Carl Schmitt is remarkable right now. So we see how he's of course popular in Russia, Dugin was very influenced by Carl Schmitt. We see how it's popular in China, we see how it is popular in... Should I finish already? No, no, no, I'm just looking at you.

Sorry. You know, joking is part of thinking in dark time, sorry. We joke a lot in Ukraine, yeah. And the humor is sometimes very dark. It has to be. Be careful. Yeah, so we see Carl Schmitt actually coming back in the United States. I mean, I was very surprised to read the works of Paul Kahn, the Yale professor,

the teacher of J.D. Vance, that the book is called "Political Theology". It's like an account of Schmittian theory and I think it's present in the ideologues of Trumpism, in people like Curtis Yarwin and people like all the rest. So it's clear that the virus of enmity is already there.

The question for us, I think, is really how to process it. The problem of American society as I see it, I don't know, just hypothetical, I've been there only for a few days, is that this virus of enmity is actually turned inside. So basically it creates a condition that everything that we consider to be agora,

is actually becoming Agon. And I think this is very dangerous. Then how to differentiate it? So the biggest question is where Agora ends and where Agon starts. That's the biggest question. So I do think that both extremes, like we build a society only on the principles of Agora,

It's dangerous and we see Europe's danger about it. So basically when I think about Germans, I think that the Germans forgot the story of Faust that you should not make a deal with the devil. And probably Europeans are learning a little bit on that. So if you build only society on the Argonne, you are defenseless.

If you build only on Agora, you're defenseless. If you build only on Agon, you become basically fascist. How to understand where Agora ends and where Agon should become? Only in terms of defensiveness.

But then of course it leads to a whole bunch of other questions, which I personally right now cannot respond to for everybody. I understand how this can be used, like how you can shape the narrative that "Ok, migrants are dangerous, let's defend against them". So how can you use this metaphor of walls and argon in a bad way?

I still don't understand how clearly navigate against it. I clearly understand it on the Ukrainian side. Well, we are being attacked, so we should defend ourselves. But then, of course, the question is that a lot of this agon emotion, again, is brought inside the society, and there we have lots of enmity inside the society. So lots of these very nasty conflicts where people actually want to harm their enemy, and instead they are harming their neighbours.

It's a big question. I don't have a clear answer on that. I just understand that we need to find a balance between the two. So next is Karl Henrik. Thank you. This was actually my question as well to this article. I know that you wrote this article in the summer of 2023. I know that because I commissioned it. And this was about a year and a half into the full-scale war.

Now we're well into the fourth year of the war. And my impression of looking at the Agora here in Western Europe, in Austria, in Germany, in the Nordic countries, is that this idea of Agon has arrived. It has been part of the public sphere, which is one...

embodiment of this Agora idea but you are still talking about it as in present form

Europe needs to learn this. Thomas Mann was sitting in Stockholm in 1939 preparing for a pen congress. He was going to deliver the big opening speech at the pen congress in Stockholm in the autumn of 1939 and he was

wanted to address not only a righteous community but a world community by saying that democracy and humanity needs to put on its armor. We have forgotten to make the distinctions between right and wrong, between good and evil. This was 1939. He never held that speech because Hitler invaded Poland and the PEN Congress was cancelled.

So, my question is about this lesson that you wanted back in summer of 23, Europe to learn. Are you seeing that we're learning? That's a good question. It's not up to me to decide. I'm in Ukraine. I cannot really have a full understanding.

I travel sometimes to Europe, to Central Europe, to Western Europe. I see the differences. I've just returned from Czech Republic. I see the problems in Czech Republic. I see the problems in Central Europe. I see that the Kundarian idea of Central Europe is going to its opposite. And it's really going beyond, like way...

way into another direction, actually. So is this a problem? Yes, there is a problem. I see a problem in Germany and France when I... that people feel to be helpless. And I have a very provocative thought for them. I mean, it's like...

turning Václav Havel upside down. It's like the powerlessness of the powerful. Europe is powerful. It's much more powerful than Russia. And it still is very scared of Russia and it's still very afraid of Russia. There is understanding on the political elites. I don't know how deep it is in the public opinion. We will see. I mean, I think it depends on the country. I think the Nordics are different people.

The South is mostly reluctant. The Baltic states, Poland, Nordics, parts of Central Europe is one story. The South is probably another story. France and Germany are in between. We don't know. So, basically, it's a test for...

Also for Europe, whether the European Union will react as an entity, as a totality, or will have a coalition of the willing, right? The parts of the European Union plus Norway and UK. It's also a possibility. So probably we'll have another Europe coming up with a much stronger idea of Argonne and another part of Europe saying, no, guys, it's just because you want to feed your arms producers or something like that.

The central Europe worries me a lot. I still don't understand why and what is going on. Why being in so much proximity with Russia and having it in your experience, why the public opinion can be so inert. But I'm not essentializing, I'm just speaking about some trends that I feel. So I have also seen you, but we had first an intervention here from the first row.

thank you very much for your words i really love what you say but there's a few things i need to take issue with you first of all i hope i never become nietzsche he may have been a great philosopher but i think as a man he was an um and secondly you said you were skeptical about um the idea of progress and um as a technologist a feminist and coming from a bourgeois background i would like to

bring up three ideas or concepts. One is technology that is rightly used, that empowers in particular, such as distributed renewable energy. If we weren't fossil fuel dependent, I think the world would look a lot different.

Secondly, feminism, if we had more young women in power rather than old men who are narcissistic, psychopathic, any of them, and concerned about legacy, I think the world would also look different. And if we didn't have that much inequality, where at one end we have wage slaves and at the other end the billionaire class that exploits the rest, whether it's

plutocrats in the West that first make a lot of money and then capture the state, or whether it's autocrats in the East that first capture the state and then steal everybody's money, doesn't matter. But if we had a bigger middle class, like in the Nordics that you mentioned, and like they're now emerging in the Baltics or in Switzerland, Southern Germany, Northern Italy, Austria, etc., I think also the world would look different. And last but not least, you also said something about losing peace and

I don't think we can guarantee that, but I think we can say that as your European brothers and sisters, we will do our best not to let you lose peace. Thank you. Thank you. Look, technology, the arguments that you make are very valid, but you can have lots of other arguments.

Like the word technology really dehumanizes, right? So we are away from this idea of, you know, battle between the two people who see the face of each other. It's really going more and more into a computer game. The more distant the sides are, the more they see each other through the screen, the more cruel they are.

So we can argue in this way. We can argue that actually social media technology makes us more cruel because more distant, more or less physically present. So I don't think that technology in itself brings moral progress. I think we can use technology to bring moral progress. We can use technology to bring moral regress. I think

What I'm arguing is that there are some deep things in the human nature that sometimes you need to read Homer and Aristotle to understand it.

rather than a bestseller of New York Times. Doesn't mean that I think that there is a regress. It doesn't mean I don't have this idea of El Dorado, pre-technological El Dorado that some people are arguing right now. No, I just think that these are the things that are not ideally connected. That

technology can bring better morality but can be worse morality. We will have one last comment, question. Thank you.

I wanted to say, because I listen to your podcast and that's why I'm here, so thank you for doing that. And my question is regarding your concept of imperialism and the mention of the word sameness. Do you think, as I understand, Putin is denying the existence of Ukraine, right? With this concept of sameness, so you're like the people of Russia, like some kind of weird diaspora for him?

and he's just gaining back control. And my question would be, because he's trying to push NATO out of Poland as well, do you think that his imperial ambition is also driven by this concept of sameness regarding Poland and the Baltics? I don't know. It's clearly that if you look at the 19th century, there is a denial of Polish identity in the Russian ideology.

There is a denial of all the Slavic identities. You have this pan-Slavism, you have this Pushkin's phrase that all the Slavic rivers will collide into the Russian sea, etc. Whether it's now relevant, I don't know. I think they're not really thinking in these terms.

When I'm saying that Russian imperialism is based upon the idea of sameness, I'm saying this only with regard to Ukrainians and Belarusians. I'm not sure it applies to Saha. I'm not sure it applies to Republic of Saha or Yakutia. I'm not sure it applies to Tatarstan. I'm not sure it applies to Buryatia. I think there the elements of racism, the classical racism are also present.

Still, it's important to think about one thing. If you look at the population census in Russia through the 20th century, you see a very strange trend. The proportion of the local nationalities decreases. Why is it decreasing? Is it because they are exterminated? Is it because they are deported? Or is it because they write themselves as Russian in the census?

I do think that even if you go into this, like, how to say it, the relations of ethnic Russians with non-ethnic Russian minorities, and we understand that Russia is very diverse, I think there is some element which is connected to language, which is a provider of this sameness. And therefore Ukrainians consider Russian language as an imperialist tool.

Because it's like... and I think we still also don't have an instrument, a conceptual instrument, maybe we have but I'm not aware of it, how to understand it. Because what the racial theory works, how it works for many Western European empires,

like the idea of difference, because race creates you the idea of difference. There is a physical, biological idea, you cannot surmount it, you cannot overcome it, you will be forever different than me. Then what makes, you know, Buryats and people in Republic of Sakha and people in Tatarstan identify, or Karelia, identify them as a Russian?

Language. So language provides this fluid tool of erasing the differences.

And therefore, for many of us, it's a tool of assimilation. It's not just one language among the others. How to call it, I don't know. Whether we can call it a linguism as an ideology of imperialism. It's a very interesting question. But it's definitely present because it's not religion. Russia is a very polyreligious country. You have Muslims, you have Buddhists, you have...

Christians, you have whatever you want. I think it's the idea of language. Therefore, about Poland, no. I think what we should understand, it's a very important fact, that Putin's idea of Russian Empire goes far beyond Soviet Union, far beyond the Soviet idea. Because the Soviet Union was based upon the idea that, okay, nations exist, okay, Ukrainians exist.

Belarusians exist, Georgians exist, etc. Ukrainians and Belarusians are no longer tribes. In the 19th century they were called tribes. They're no longer tribes, they're nations, they have their languages. We have this period of 1920s. And I think Putin wants to go beyond that and he openly said that. And therefore he fights against Lenin because he thinks that Lenin undermined this unitary concept of the Russian Empire. Lenin

kind of created this diversity. For Putin, Lenin wanted to be kind of Woodrow Wilson for Eastern Europe, you know, self-determination of nations and et cetera. So he wants to go beyond that. His ideal is 19th century Russian Empire. But if you think in these terms, well, a big part of Poland was part of this Russian Empire. So maybe he might think as far as that. Geopolitically,

His idea of the Russian Empire is definitely something that connects the Baltic and the Black Sea. And therefore the existence of this space

which was the space of, you know, Rus', which was the space of great duty of Lithuania, which was the space of Rzeczpospolita, which was the space of Habsburg monarchy, etc. This existence of the space between the two seas for him is unacceptable. The greatest moments of Russian Empire for him was the moments when Russia controlled the "Sintermario".

late 18th century, 19th century, up until the loss in the First World War and then regaining these territories after the Second World War. Therefore, it's not only about Ukraine. Now he tries to realize this project of getting access to the Black Sea, but the Baltic region is also very, very dangerous. This is the way how I see it. So, thank you. Is it very urgent?

You were not fully convinced that it is very urgent. Okay, let's stop it here. I was very grateful for the last question about imperialism. I think it was very good also to have this at the end. You have said quite a lot on that topic in one of your podcasts and I can only say at the end...

For those of you who have not yet listened to it, there is the series that has the same title. Check for it. And I think there are very interesting ideas in the podcast by Volodymyr Yemelenko. Thanks to all of you for joining us tonight. For those of you who might have been here the first time, there are maybe a few.

I can tell you this is not the first event we are doing on Ukraine, and I promise it is not the last event we are doing on Ukraine. Come back, and also we are having very, very many other events, non-Ukrainian events maybe also sometimes. So join us for that. And most of all, let me thank Volodymyr for this presentation and for the discussion and for being with us tonight. Thank you very much.

Thank you. It's a pleasure. This was Thinking in Dark Times, a podcast series of Ukraine World, an English language media outlet about Ukraine. My name is Volodymyr Yermolenko. I'm a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of Ukraine World and the president of PEN Ukraine. This episode is a recording of my lecture at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna on May the 6th, 2025.

You can support our work on Patreon, the link is in the description. Your support is crucial for us as we rely a lot on crowdfunding. You can also support our volunteer trips to the frontline areas in Ukraine where we deliver support for both soldiers and civilians. You can donate via PayPal, the link is in the description. Thank you for listening, stay with us and stand with Ukraine.