Abstract

ROMANIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY do not constitute themselves in an orderly and continuous system of their own. Nor are they indispensable to the serious student of central human reflections and searches for truth. Their real interest is a historical one and, in the light of the globalized civilization of the twentieth century, one of cultural geography. A national community placed at the margins of Western culture, pertaining to it, but not quite able to synchronize its intellectual or socioeconomic development with that of the West, while definitely unwilling to accommodate itself to non-Western modes of existence and thought-such were the circumstances that invited the discovery of philosophical discourses in which some key Western dilemmas and concepts could be qualified. Romanian philosophizing was and remained largely Western in its orientation, but Byzantine and Russian influences are acknowledged. Even more powerful was the sense that the experience of the Carpathian-Danubian area entitled the intellectual members of this community to speak not only for the values of a continuously progressing West, but also for a humanity that was pre-Western or even pre-Christian, a humanity that had not yet advanced from a "culture of shame" to a "culture of guilt", and a humanity whose ways of behavior and thinking were more "natural," and still widespread over large parts of the globe. Unconsciously first, but often consciously, Romanian philosophers saw themselves as bridges over the wide chasm separating Western and non-Western intellectual behavior and as mediators between both sides. Similar intentions can of course be detected among other practitioners of philosophy in Asia, South America, or Eastern Europe. Arguably, however, Romanian philosophy can be seen as exemplary in its earnest effort to transpose Western values and concepts into a language intelligible and acceptable to non-Western and traditional readers, while at the same time rehabilitating archaic and traditional beliefs and behaviors, or making them palatable to modern and Western audiences. This was a worthy communicative effort, one that remains of great interest to the contemporary intellectual community which is sometimes puzzled or discouraged when trying to discover the best ways and means for a common, worldwide philosophical language at the end of the twentieth century. Even a cursory examination of Romanian philosophers should be helpful in this respect. I will first present a few early examples of this effort of communication, connection, and qualification by Romanian philosophers; thereafter I will enumerate the main features of a modern Romanian school of philosophy as it crystallized from 1930 on. Finally I will examine in some more detail the writings of Mihai Sora, not only because he seems the most significant living Romanian philosopher, but also because he typifies the questionings of Romanian philosophers, modifies in original and lucid ways the themes of its tradition and, indeed, supplies a kind of retrospective coherence to this tradition.