Ashot Voskanyan


Ashot Voskanyan is an Armenian philosopher, former diplomat and member of parliament.

Biography

Voskanyan is a graduate of the faculty of philosophy of the Yerevan State University. He was a member of the Communist Party. He was [1990 Armenians|Armenian Supreme Soviet election|elected] to the Armenian parliament in 1990 as a member of the pro-independence Pan-Armenian National Movement, led by Levon Ter-Petrosyan. He was re-elected to parliament in 1995. He was the Chairman of Standing Committee on Ethics in the parliament. He was also a senior member of the HHSh. He speaks fluent German.
In 1995 Voskanyan was appointed Armenia's Ambassador to Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia and as Armenia's Permanent Representative to Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the United Nations Office at Vienna. In 1998 he was appointed Ambassador of Armenia to Germany, a position he held until 2002. He then worked in different positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including adviser to the Foreign Minister, and Head of Asia-Pacific and Africa Department at the Ministry.
He is the founder and president of the Armenian Research Center in Humanities since 1993. As a scholar, he is particularly interested in methodology of social sciences, hermeneutics, theories of rationality and social modernization, and national identity. He currently teaches at the American University of Armenia and Russian-Armenian University. He formerly lectured at the Yerevan State University as well.

Views

Voskanyan, himself an active participant of the Karabakh movement, argues that it was the end of something, while the 2018 Armenian revolution was the beginning of something. On May 2, 2018 he was among the faculty of the American University of Armenia that signed a public statement supporting "the Armenian people's peaceful movement to restore social democratic values and fair, transparent elections."

Publications

Voskanyan has authored more than 50 publications, in Armenian, Russian, German, English and French. His monograph The Inevitability of Understanding: Essays on the history of philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction was published by the Yerevan State University Press in 2015.
In 2017 his The Time of Charents was published in which he analyzes the thought of Yeghishe Charents, the prominent Armenian poet, and that of Goethe.
Selected publications: