The first cycle of public discussions co-organized by The Books’ Journal, and the Athens Conservatory at the Conservatory’s premises, will host Professor Dimitris Dimitrakos on February 12, 2025, who will answer questions from journalist and Books’ Journal editor Elias Kanellis.

Dimitris Dimitrakos is an emeritus professor of political philosophy at the University of Athens and one of the founders and pillars of the Department of Methodology, History, and Theory of Science. An active member of the Scientific Council of the Center for Liberal Studies (KEFIM), he is a graduate of the London School of Economics and has a long academic and writing career in the fields of epistemology, political philosophy, Marxism and liberalism, theories of democracy and freedom, and rights theory. During the dictatorship, he settled in France and obtained his doctorate on the thought of Antonio Gramsci. During the same period, he taught international relations and political economy at the University of Reims, before teaching at the University of Athens, which he left in 2003.

Thoughtful and combative, Dimitris Dimitrakos, alongside his theoretical contributions, systematically intervenes in political events through his actions. During the years of dictatorship, he was active in the Democratic Defense, and in the post-dictatorship era, he defended liberal democracy and an open society.

He studied Antonio Gramsci systematically, not merely as an academic researcher but, above all, as an active conscience. As he himself says, Gramsci’s thinking moves in a democratic direction and, at a time when Eurocommunism was on the rise in Italy, he believed that promoting it would contribute to a form of Marxism that would be universally accepted: renewed, democratic, and broad. Later, while studying under Karl Popper, he realized that political philosophy has certain principles which, regardless of one’s ideological perspective, are immutable: truth, science, and critical thinking.

He has written the books: Gramsci et le problème de la conquête du pouvoir (1980), Kostas Mitsotakis: Political Biography, Volume A (1989), Hegemony and Discourse. Antonio Gramsci and the Problem of the Conquest of Power (2021). He has collaborated with Vima’s “New Times” and currently writes for Nea and Books’ Journal.

The evening of dialogue and ideas at the Athens Conservatory is, as always, open to the public and admission is free.