Ashot Voskanyan (hy|Աշոտ Ոսկանյան; born April 24, 1949) is an Armenian philosopher, former diplomat and member of parliament.
Voskanyan is a graduate of the faculty of philosophy of the Yerevan State University. He was a member of the Communist Party. He was elected to the Armenian parliament (then still called the Supreme Soviet) in 1990 as a member of the pro-independence Pan-Armenian National Movement (HHSh), led by Levon Ter-Petrosyan. He was re-elected to parliament (now called the National Assembly) in 1995. He was the Chairman of Standing Committee on Ethics in the parliament.[1] He was also a senior member of the HHSh.[2] He speaks fluent German.[3]
In 1995 Voskanyan was appointed Armenia's Ambassador to Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia (stationed in Vienna)[4] and as Armenia's Permanent Representative to Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations Office at Vienna. In 1998 he was appointed Ambassador of Armenia to Germany, a position he held until 2002.[5] He then worked in different positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including adviser to the Foreign Minister,[6] and Head of Asia-Pacific and Africa Department at the Ministry.[7]
He is the founder and president of the Armenian Research Center in Humanities (ARCH) 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.[8] He formerly lectured at the Yerevan State University as well.[9]
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.[10] 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."[11]
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 (Հասկացման անխուսափելիությունը. Դրվագներ փիլիսոփայական հերմենևտիկայի և կազմաքանդման պատմությունից) was published by the Yerevan State University Press in 2015 .[12] [13]
In 2017 his The Time of Charents (Չարենցի ժամանակը) was published in which he analyzes the thought of Yeghishe Charents, the prominent Armenian poet, and that of Goethe.[14]
Selected publications:
de:Wolfgang Kaschuba
. Representations on the Margins of Europe . 2007 . Campus Verlag . Frankfurt/New York . 9783593382418 . 326 . The Staging of Politics and the "Folklorization" of Political Discourse.