Liberta Csonka-van Reijswoud (PhD)

Liberta is a philosopher, artist, and activist belonging to a new generation of humanities scholars who seek to bring critical thinking beyond the boundaries of academia. She thinks, writes, and initiates artistic projects that explore existential questions at the heart of our shared human experience. Her work engages with the affinities and differences between human and animal existence, questions of gender, and the possibilities of cultivating a more-than-modern relationship with nature.

Liberta’s relationship with animals has long shaped both her personal life and her philosophical and artistic practice. Alongside her academic research, this theme continually returns in her creative work—not as a private story, but as a shared human question that speaks to something deeply familiar within us all.

This interdisciplinary evening creates a space for encounter, dialogue, and shared reflection. Through philosophy, music, photography, literature, and performance, audiences are invited into a deeper relationship with one another, and with the human, the woman, and the animal that coexist within us.

The evening concludes with a live musical performance.

Contributing Artists

Liberta Csonka – philosopher and performer

Bernadette Telek-Fejér – photographer

Csaba Formanek – actor

Tamás Szathmári – musician and filmmaker

Liberta Csonka-van Reijswoud is a philosopher, founder of the EB OVO Public Benefit Association, and the mother of two boys. As a practitioner of philosophical practice, she runs a private philosophical praxis and as part of it she regularly facilitates Philosophical Café gatherings across Hungary, particularly in Alsógöd and Budapest. Since 2022, her work has also been featured as part of the Valley of Arts Festival.

As an invited speaker, she has lectured at the Doctoral School of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) and at the Institute of Human–Environment Transaction at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). In January 2025, she presented her philosophical thesis to an international scholarly audience at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. She currently teaches in both Hungarian and English at the Faculty of Cultural Studies, Education and Regional Development of the University of Pécs.

The human–animal dichotomy occupies a central place in her lectures and research. She explores how questioning this dualistic framework can dissolve fixed patterns of thought and become a source of inspiration and transformation. Her primary field of research is human–animal relationships, and the title of her doctoral dissertation is The Place of the Animal in Philosophy: Cynophylosophy; The Outlines of a Practical Philosophy.

For ten years, through the work of the EB OVO Association, she advocated for responsible dog ownership and represented the interests of dog owners. During this period, she closely observed the behaviour of dogs and, perhaps even more importantly, that of their human companions. She regards urban dog keeping as a unique mirror through which broader tendencies of human nature become visible, offering an exceptional opportunity for self-understanding and development. Concluding this chapter of advocacy work, she chose an academic path as a way of reflecting upon these experiences.

Another major focus of her work is philosophical practice, philosophy as a way of life, and the art of living (ars vitae), through which she has developed an extensive international network. At her invitation, the American philosopher Lou Marinoff visited Budapest and led the professional programme of a five-day series of events. At the World Congress of Philosophy in Rome, she participated as a member of the thirteen-person delegation representing the Doctoral School of Philosophy at the University of Pécs. In 2023 and 2025, she took part in the International Conference on Philosophical Practice (ICPP) in Timișoara and Zagreb.

As an active member of the Philosophical Café movement, she regularly organises public events beyond the boundaries of academia. Within the framework of her philosophical practice, she also offers philosophical counselling. Her explicit aim is to make philosophy—and contemporary philosophers—more visible, accessible, and relevant to wider audiences.

The question of artistic self-expression in the twenty-first century, and the recognition and transformation of its twentieth-century forms, constitutes another central theme of her philosophical inquiry. The evolution of her own philosophical and artistic journey may itself be read as an ongoing response to this question.