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February - June 2022
Michael Jones is a professor of philosophy and theology at Liberty University, USA, and an executive editor of the Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies (www.JSRI.ro). He is a two-time Fulbright scholar (2000-2001 at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, RO, and 2014-15 at the University of Bucharest), past president of the Virginia Philosophical Association (https://sites.google.com/site/virginiaphilosophy/), an honorary board member of the Lucian Blaga Society (http://societateablaga.ro/), and is the sponsor of the Virginia Zeta chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the International Honors Society for Philosophy. He was the recipient of the Diploma of Excellence at the 17th Annual International Lucian Blaga Festival, May 2007. He is the author of The Metaphysics of Religion: Lucian Blaga and Contemporary Philosophy (FDU Press, 2006) and Moral Reasoning: An Intentional Approach to Distinguishing Right from Wrong (Kendal Hunt, 2017), co-author of Talking About Ethics: A Conversational Approach to Moral Dilemmas (Kregel Academic, 2021), and co-editor of The Challenges of Multiculturalism in Central and Eastern Europe (Editura Provopress, 2005) and Education and Cultural Diversity (Editura Provopress, 2006). He has presented at the American Philosophical Association, the Society for Philosophy of Religion, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and at other conferences in Romania and the United States. His articles likewise have been published in both Romania and the U.S.
My ICUB project involves two activities and two topics, with both activities being applied to each topic. The two activities are research and teaching. The two projects are translating Lucian Blaga and comparing racism in Romania and the United States.
Lucian Blaga is arguably the greatest Romanian philosopher. In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy Mircea Eliade calls Blaga “The most gifted and critical original thinker” in the history of Romanian philosophy (Eliade 1967, 233). He wrote dozens of books and very many articles, and a special chair in philosophy of culture was created in his honor at the University of Cluj. Unfortunately, while all of his poetry has been published in English, very little of his philosophy has. I am translating his very last book, Fiinţa istorica (The Historical Being), into English. I am employing the strategy called “team translating,” which partners a person from the source language with a person from the target language to produce a translation that accurately communicates the nuance of the original in perfectly idiomatic expression in the target language. The teams will be composed of the students in my class on Blaga taught at the Faculty of Philosophy as representatives of the source language and me as the representative of the target language. Together we will translate Fiinţa istorica and then seek to publish our translation in America.
Racism is a problem in many cultures. Discrimination against African Americans and Native Americans in the United States has become infamous the world over. Somewhat less well known is the discrimination that Roma face in Eastern Europe. However, the parallels between the experiences of African Americans and Romania’s Roma are striking, as I discuss in my article “Racism at Home and Abroad: Thoughts from a Christian Ethicist” (Public Reason 7:1-2, December 2015, 3-12). In an ethics course on race and racism, the students at the Faculty of Philosophy and I will explore the similarities and differences between racism as it occurs in Romania and as it manifests in the United States and study ways that racism can be combatted.