A.M.: Moreover, our generation has had the chance to live in two different worlds.

Andrei Pleşu: That is a big chance, indeed, which we will nevertheless be the only ones to have enjoyed. We can already see that this type of experience cannot be imparted. The generation that happens to be situated in only one context cannot help not being blind to the preceding context. The young people who are now in their twenties may well wonder what we mean when we speak of the ?other? world. I have to admit, though, that it was not our case (to be part of this sad scenario of the generation gap). Most of us grew in families who instilled in us, from the earliest age, the nostalgia of another epoch. Even though we had not been direct participants in that epoch, we were raised in a world which overtly bore its marks. To me, the inter-war period, the family life from before WWII was alive thanks to the tales told over each and every lunch. This is history now. And maybe we are to blame for that. What were we inspired with in the ?50s and ?60s? With the memory of a world that did well and should be revived. Whereas what we have to say about the world we lived in is, and cannot be other than, a negative discourse. We speak of an ugly world that had better be abandoned. One cannot but resent this type of discourse. The young generation now does not care to listen to analyses of times past that use an exclusively negative language. That is something to reflect on and should urge us to look for the positive discourse we can offer. We need to give some more consistent thought to a type of message that is tonic, affirmative, since the discourse of ?the wounded who lived a sore life? is extremely spiteful, a kind of discourse that has no shaping power.

A.M.: It seems to me that after 1989, both Gabriel Liiceanu and yourself initiated institutional projects that were first conceived in Păltiniş and thus appear to be the actual result of that type of vitality.

Andrei Pleşu: This is worth a thought: things usually come into being in forms different from what you first planned. But they do. It is a coming into being that includes even deviations from the project. A young man wrote a letter to Gabriel Liiceanu, saying, ?Păltiniş did not prepare you for today?s world. And the kind of discourse you conceived then did not prepare us for today?s world either.? I agree. I had the same feeling myself. Back then, we did not think strategically about the future, we did not plan another world.

            Nevertheless, there is a visible outcome of Păltiniş in today?s world. It is different from what people in general expected or even from what we ourselves thought it would be. It did not trigger what Noica hoped for, that is the members of the group to pursue brilliant academic careers. That is what Noica ultimately expected of us. For Gabriel, he envisaged the history of philosophy. As for me, he was a bit uneasy about my resistance to any clear track, as he saw it. At any rate, he expected of me to make a clear choice of, and work hard inside, a well-defined domain.