Leonidas Donskis – an encyclopedic Renaissance-like figure

Abstract

This report was made at the Doctor Honoris Causa conferred to Prof. Leonidas Donskis by Valahia University of Târgoviște on November 6th, 2014. The editors express their gratitudeto Vlad-Gabriel Ghiorghiu, a CoolPeace graduate, for the admirable translation of this report. The publication of this report is supported by EEA Grants, contract no 4/22.07.2014. Currently a professor of advanced studies and academic development at the ISM University of Management and Economics of Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, and a former member of the European Parliament, Leonidas Donskis was born on the 13th of August 1962 in Klaipėda, Lithuania. From 2005 to 2009 he served as dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University of Kaunas, Lithuania. As a docent, visiting and associate professor, he also taught at the University of Helsinki, Finland, in the field of social and moral philosophy, at the University of Tallinn, Estonia, in the field of philosophy and theory of culture, as well as universities from the United States (Dickinson College, Pennsylvania and Montevallo University, Alabama) in the field of cultural studies and universities from England, Italy and Hungary in similar fields of endeavor. Alongside his scholarly career stands his remarkable contribution to the field of the mass-media, both as a producer and moderator of cultural programs for the Lithuanian Television or as editor for the print media (The Baltic Times, The Ukrainian Week etc). The academic bettering carried out in countries like Lithuania and Finland spawned his encyclopedic character and determined the ramification of his intellectual interests. His bachelor’s degree in philosophy and theater, received from the Lithuanian State Conservatoire (presently the “Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre”) in 1985 was followed by a master’s degree program in philosophical studies at the University of Vilnius (1987). From the same university he took his first doctorate in philosophy and the humanities, with a thesis about the culture in crisis and the philosophy of culture in the views of O. Spengler, A. J. Toynbee and L. Mumford (1990). This was soon to be followed by a second doctorate, received from the University of Helsinki, with a thesis dwelling on the relation between ideology and utopia, moral imagination and cultural criticism in the 20th century (1999).