This paper is a background study. It gives an overview of the institutions, decisive trends and major achievements of Hungarian philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus light is shed on the philosophical scenery which forms the background to the Lukács Circle. The paper discusses the relation of the Lukács Circle at the turn of the century to "official" Hungarian philosophy. First, the introduction portrays the various phases of the evolution of Hungarian institutions of philosophy. (...) Then it sketches the institutional scene at the turn of the century. Thirdly, it attempts to determine the relation of the Lukács Circle to the official academic philosophy, and also sketches some of its aspects after 1919-1920. (shrink)

This paper is a background study. It gives an overview of the institutions, decisive trends and major achievements of Hungarian philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus light is shed on the philosophical scenery which forms the background to the Lukács Circle. The paper discusses the relation of the Lukács Circle at the turn of the century to "official" Hungarian philosophy. First, the introduction portrays the various phases of the evolution of Hungarian institutions of philosophy. (...) Then it sketches the institutional scene at the turn of the century. Thirdly, it attempts to determine the relation of the Lukács Circle to the official academic philosophy, and also sketches some of its aspects after 1919-1920. (shrink)

In this introductory paper I sketch the tradition, several early aspects of which are discussed in the following essays and reviews. I introduce the main figures whose work initiated and maintained the sociological orientation in Hungarian philosophy thereby tracing its evolution. I suggest that its sociological outlook, if taken to be a characteristic tendency that gives Hungarian philosophy its distinctive flavour, provides us with the framework of a possible narrative about the history of Hungarian philosophy in the (...) broader context of Central European philosophy. This narrative, in turn, suggests a way of integrating the latter into the history of Western philosophy rather than restricting its scope to a handful of canonical works only. (shrink)

The thirty year long friendship between Imre Lakatos and the classic scholar and historian of mathematics Árpád Szabó had a considerable influence on the ideas, scholarly career and personal life of both scholars. After recalling some relevant facts from their lives, this paper will investigate Szabó's works about the history of pre-Euclidean mathematics and its philosophy. We can find many similarities with Lakatos' philosophy of mathematics and science, both in the self-interpretation of early axiomatic Greek mathematics as Szabó reconstructs it, (...) and in the general overview Szabó provides us about the turn from the intuitive methods of Greek mathematicians to the strict axiomatic method of Euclid's Elements. As a conclusion, I will argue that the correct explanation of these similarities is that in their main works they developed ideas they had in common from the period of intimate intellectual contact in Hungarian academic life in the mid-twentieth century. In closing, I will recall some relevant features of this background that deserve further research. (shrink)

Regions, boundaries, identities. The concept of Eastern Central Europe in the works of Hungarian philosophers in the long 19th century.

This paper is a background study. It gives an overview of the institutions, decisive trends and major achievements of Hungarian philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus light is shed on the philosophical scenery which forms the background to the Lukács Circle. The paper discusses the relation of the Lukács Circle at the turn of the century to “official” Hungarian philosophy. First, the introduction portrays the various phases of the evolution of Hungarian institutions of philosophy. (...) Then it sketches the institutional scene at the turn of the century. Thirdly, it attempts to determine the relation of the Lukács Circle to the official academic philosophy, and also sketches some of its aspects after 1919–1920. (shrink)

One bi-lingual - hungarian-ENGLISH - meditation and research about the Illness and the Living Being. Concentrated, of course, to the specific HUMAN reporting to them. The book investigates philosophically the issue of human illness and its organic pertinence to the meaning of human life starting from the recognition that the dangerous encounter with the experience of illness is an unavoidable – and as such crucial – experience of the life of any living being. As for us humans, there is (...) probably no mortal man who has never suffered of some – any! – kind of disease from his birth to the end of his life… Illness is therefore an experience or outright a danger of existence and its possibility, as well as a way of being that nobody has ever been and will ever be ontological or existentially exempted from. So, it may well be “arbitrary” or “accidental” which disease affects which being or person, when and to what degree, in what way, etc., but it is factually unavoidable that in the course of one’s entire life – from its very beginning to its very end – one would never fall ill in some respect. The paper discusses this issue by the ontological investigation of possibility. Together with the analyses about of the origins and history of the MEDICINE. -/- The english CONTENTS -/- Illness – A Possibility of the Living Being Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Human Illness ............................................. 127 -/- Excursus Sketchy considerations regarding the problems of Christian medicine and Christian healing ...................................................... 135 -/- A dialogue-attempt with Aristotle: Dynamis, energeia, entelecheia, and steresis ...................................................... 147 . (shrink)

This paper outlines the history of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology and their role in the construction of the nation and Hungarian liberalism in the Dualist period . Affected by the specific socio-political conditions of this ethnically most diverse country of contemporary Europe, the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology diverge considerably from the models offered by the historiography in the British, French and German contexts. The paper argues that the pluralistic, cultural and strongly integrative ethnographic tradition (...) that prevailed in Hungary in the last decades of the nineteenth century did not notably wane and shift towards a biological, hierarchical and racialist thinking by the end of the First World War. Furthermore, Hungarian liberalism did not simply provide the milieu for these disciplines to flourish, but was itself partly the result of these disciplines’ attempts to formulate the very concepts of ethnicity and race. (shrink)

Some central issues of fin-de-siècle Hungarian philosophy and intellectual tradition can be retrieved from the writings of József Eötvös and his mid-nineteenth century contemporaries. An ambiguous attitude towards metaphysics, emphasis on sociological issues as well as a regional perspective are apparent in his texts prior to the emergence of the great fin-de-siècle generation of Hungarian intellectuals. They survived the Habsburg Empire thanks to the post-Monarchical literary tradition and Péter Esterházy’s works; they provided an adequate vocabulary for the Central (...) European experience following the Soviet Era. (shrink)

The report gives a survey of the Hungarian philosophy of science after 1973. The report throws some light on the history of Hungarian philosophy in the context of the political circumstances of the late sixties and seventies. It starts with the not so well-known history of 'persecution of philosophers' in 1973. Then it treats the emergence of the philosophy of science focussing on the most significant representatives of this branch of philosophy, which was up to that time almost (...) unknown in Hungary. Due to the fact that the important results in Hungarian philosophy of science run parallel with the reception and translation of the significant products of Western philosophy, such as Wittgenstein's, Popper's, Kuhn's, or Polanyi's works, the report gives relatively significant room to treat these achievements. The last part of the report presents a survey of the younger generation of the philosophers of science, concentrating on the most important insights. (shrink)

The Hungarian-born author, who is both an original and a prolific thinker, has written on various figures of the history of philosophy and on particular philosophic problems, his first published work having been his Grundlegung der Philosophie, followed by studies in metaphysics,; esthetics, psychology, and philosophic anthropology. However, the major work containing his own system is the Aufbau des Seins. To know and under stand Brandenstein's philosophy, one ought to study this work, a task made difficult by its coined (...) terms, its complicated, Ciceronian style, the relative novelty of its thought, and its extreme systematization. (shrink)

Without attempting to cover all the philosophical questions posed by modern mathematics, provides a glimpse of a broad vision of the subject. Covering general philosophical perspectives, foundational approaches, the applicability of mathematics, and history, treats selected topics from a variety of perspectives to demonstrate the range of practices in the discipline. Among them are moderate mathematical fictionism, categorical foundations of the protean character of mathematics, the mathematical overdetermination of physics, and Hungarian traditions and the philosophy of non-classical logic. The (...) 21 papers were presented at a meeting of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, held in Budapest in May 1993. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This dialogue between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi took place in Budapest on March 10, 2003 at Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies, which is affiliated with Central European University (CEU). Ricoeur was the honorary president of Pasts, Inc., and its spiritus rector. On March 8, he had given a lecture on "History, Memory, and Forgetting" in the context of an international conference entitled "Haunting Memories? History in Europe after Authoritarianism," and organized by Pasts Inc. and the Körber Foundation. On (...) March 9, Ricoeur had received the first Honoris Causa doctorate ever granted by CEU. Ricoeur had already visited Hungary in 1933. At the time, he was participating in a Boy Scouts European jamboree at Gödöllö (where he also saw Horthy on his white horse). After WWII, he went back to Hungary to meet with Lukács. Mona Antohi has transcribed and edited the recording of the dialogue. The two interlocutors have then made some minor revisions. The original text, in French, is available on the website of Pasts, Inc. (www.ceu.hu/pasts). This English version, translated and annotated by Gil Anidjar, will be included in Sorin Antohi's book, Talking History. Making Sense of Pasts, forthcoming in 2006 from CEU Press. His own Romanian translation of the dialogue was published in the Iasi-based journal, Xenopoliana (3-4, 2004), as was the Hungarian translation by Réka Toth, which appeared in the Budapest-based journal, 2000 (November-December 2003). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 334-345 [Access article in PDF] Philosophy After Joyce:Derrida and Davidson Reed Way Dasenbrock A GOOD DEAL OF ATTENTION has been paid to James Joyce's influence on literature. Few novelists in the twentieth century have escaped Joyce's influence one way or another, and Robert Martin Adams has even dedicated a book, AfterJoyce, 1 to the proposition that the history of prose fiction is most properly (...) divided into two eras, before and after Joyce. One suspects that Joyce would have appreciated Adams's quasi-blasphemous periodizing.My focus here is Joyce's influence on a different intellectual and cultural realm, philosophy. Joyce's impact on philosophy clearly has not been of the same magnitude. Joyce is not one of those rare figures who have spanned fields or been as important an influence in another field as in his own, unlike Nietzsche, say, or a figure of concern to us here, Jacques Derrida. Joyce's impact on philosophy, thus, is not epoch-changing or field-changing in the way his impact on literature is. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are the two philosophers in the twentieth century whose work have comparably been assessed as epoch-changing. It is worth noting that both men are close contemporaries of Joyce: Wittgenstein, in particular, with his multilingual, Austro-Hungarian, and pan-European character, orientation towards the arts, defiance of so many philosophical conventions, and self-awareness of language, offers a fascinating parallel with Joyce, a parallel already explored to [End Page 334] some extent in the literature. If Joyce, Stravinsky, Picasso, and Le Corbusier, for example, can be said to exemplify modernist literature, music, painting, and architecture, then Wittgenstein is the exemplification of modernist philosophy. But Modernism, or at least so we are told, is out of fashion and out of date, yet Joyce remains our contemporary in ways many of his fellow modernists may not. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in his continuing presence in contemporary philosophy.The conventional way of writing the history of philosophy in the twentieth century is to divide it into two camps, one oriented towards mathematics, science and logical analysis, a school of philosophy called the analytic or Anglo-American school, the other oriented towards literature and culture and an engagement with the history of philosophy, called the Continental school. That there are a number of problems with this way of mapping the field is by now widely accepted, but no one has successfully replaced this division with anything generally seen to be more adequate, so we continue to use the terms, if as Derrida might say "under erasure." If contemporary analytic philosophy has a single leading figure, I would assign that position to Donald Davidson; continental philosophy has distinct German and French variants, but clearly foremost on the French side is Jacques Derrida. One of the factors leading to our awareness that this bipolar model of the history of twentieth-century philosophy doesn't work very well has been a body of work pointing out a number of similarities between the work of these two philosophers. 2 But what hasn't been pointed out is that both philosophers are interested in Joyce. Thus, the work of Joyce is one of the places the two currents of philosophy merge or at least come into contact. In my opinion, neither Derrida nor Davidson is or deserves to be a crucial figure in Joyce criticism, but looking at their interest in Joyce allows us to trace a neglected chapter in Joyce's influence on the culture and thought of our time and to assess the similarities and differences between the work of these two philosophers.Derrida's work on Joyce includes two essays on Joyce, one an address to the 1984 Joyce Symposium in Frankfurt, "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear say yes in Joyce," 3 an essay which Margot Norris included in A Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses (in abridged form) as one of five exemplary or representative pieces of theoretical approaches to Ulysses (representing deconstruction, of course), and an earlier essay on Finnegans Wake, "Two Words for Joyce... (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

A critique of--and alternative to--pure narrative approaches to life-history, offered by a distinguished Hungarian philospher.

The three young philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith have become well-known in the last few years especially in German-speaking analytical philosophy and phenomenology circles. This is on the one hand as a result of their historical and systematic philosophical work; but it is also because of the provocative way in which they represent their philosophy. Because they often appear in threes, they have become known as the "gang of three" or "three musketeers" or even – and this (...) in an admiring sense – "mafiosi" (Rescher). They are known primarily for the small workshops they have been organizing in uncomplicated Anglo-Saxon manner all over Europe. Their goal has been to show that analytic philosophy as it has been pursued up to now is in need of reform and also that the history of scientific philosophizing is not identical to the history of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy. Above all, they have tried to make more well known the Austrian tradition of scientific philosophy, and they can be given credit for having done much to promote the current interest in this tradition, which means: the history of Austrian philosophy of the 19th and early 20th centuries and its historical context in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (shrink)

Agnes Heller is one of the leading thinkers to come out of the tradition of critical theory. Her awesome intellectual range and output includes ethics, philosophical anthropology, political philosophy and a theory of modernity and its culture. Hungarian by birth, she was one of the best known dissident Marxists in central Europe in the 1960's and 1970's. Since her forced immigration she has held visiting lectureships all over the world and has been the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at (...) the New School in New York for the last twenty years. This introduction to her thought is ideal for all students of philosophy, political theory and sociology. Grumley explores Heller's early work, elaborating her relation to Lukacs and the evolution of her own version of Marxism. He examines the subsequent break with Marxism and the initial development of an alternative radical philosophy. Finally, he explains and assesses her mature reflective post-modernism, a perspective that is both sceptical and utopian, that upholds a critical humanist perspective just as it critiques contemporary democratic culture. (shrink)

This paper examines the planning process and architecture of two public psychiatric institutions built around 1900 in Trieste and Lower Austria. From 1864, the building of new asylums was the responsibility of Crown land governments, which by the end of the nineteenth century had emerged as sites of power and self-presentation by minority groups and new political parties. At the same time, the area of asylum planning was establishing itself as a branch of asylum psychiatry and promoting the idea of (...) the asylum as model settlement, contributing to social reform. I analyse the interaction of psychiatrists, architects and government officials involved in planning the two institutions in the context of Crown land governments’ self-positioning within the empire and internationally . The Trieste asylum planners were working for a government controlled by Italian nationalists, but their desire for a ‘modern’ asylum turned them towards German models. The Christian Social government in Lower Austria sought to supplant Germany as the leader in this branch of science. The spatial arrangement and visual articulation of the two asylums is interpreted in the context of the interaction of psychiatry and the politics of regional autonomy. (shrink)

The changing conditions for the accumulation and transmission of knowledge in the age of multimedia networks make it inevitable that old philosophical problems become formulated in a new light. Above all, the problem of the unity of knowledge is once again a topical issue. The situation-dependent acquisition of knowledge that is made possible by mobile learning transcends the boundaries of traditional disciplines, linking the domains of text, diagram, and picture. Database integration and multimedia search become central problems in the epistemology (...) of the 21st century, while handheld devices are emerging as vital technologies for supporting collaborative learning. -- Kristóf Nyíri has published widely on Wittgenstein, Austrian intellectual history, and the philosophy of communication. He directs the interdisciplinary research program COMMUNICATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY, conducted jointly by the Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Westel Mobile Telecommunications, Budapest. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950Eva L. CorredorA History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950, by René Wellek; xvii & 458 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, $42.50.The seventh volume of René Wellek’s history of modern criticism may well be the most interesting of his eight-volume monumental oeuvre. Devoted to German, (...) Russian, and Eastern European criticism between 1900 and 1950, it exemplifies most strikingly Wellek’s personal battles with critics who were roughly his contemporaries and closest to his own European background. “I should like to think of my History as ‘elucidatory,’ as not ‘argumentative’ or ‘polemical’” (v, xxi), Wellek writes, but he does not shrink from expressing his own critical perspective usually in a gentlemanly humorous or ironical, but occasionally also quite harsh and stubborn fashion. He insists on the importance of individual value judgments in critical analysis, particularly when they are his own: “I do not believe that... my views and those of my contemporaries will be replaced by completely different assumptions” (“Reflections on my History,” The Attack on Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982, p. 145).Since Wellek rejects the idea of a historical determinism and thinks that “an evolutionary history of criticism must fail” (The Attack, p. 144), he provides less a history than a collection of essays in which he offers succinct appraisals of writers, thinkers and critics both as individuals and as participants in the broader literary movements of the century. He presents “portraits” (p. xv), which he also calls “doxographies” (The Attack, p. 143), containing a vast amount of quotations carefully selected to support the authority of his own views or to let them speak for themselves when he would rather not comment.More than any previous work, this volume embodies Wellek’s will and determination to carry on against all odds even when he can no longer do so on his own. An accident in 1986 left him bedridden and dependent on students and secretaries to help him with his research and writing. He was able to draw on a wealth of previously published essays, some of which had been written more than three decades ago. There are some arguable inaccuracies and shortcomings (his canon includes obscure writers but not Adorno and [End Page 259] again no women writers), and problems with his bibliographies and references. Yet Wellek’s unique talent to assemble in one volume half a century of critical commentary on the literatures of half a dozen different cultures appears intact. So do his well-known critical positions.Among his most interesting essays are those on Spitzer, Auerbach, Ingarden, Bakhtin, and Benjamin, highly erudite men in whose company Wellek enjoys moving. On the other hand, some extraordinarily fertile minds and their enormous influence on the post-1950 critical discourse are often quickly dismissed or treated with unnecessary condescension. Young Roman Jakobson “should be forgotten” (p. 372). Freud’s psychoanalysis “seems forced and mistaken” (p. 79). Heidegger “often ascribes a meaning which seems to me absent in the text itself” (p. 89). Wellek’s low tolerance of any but his own interpretation of Dostoevsky appears repeatedly in this volume: Thomas Mann’s views are called “strange” and “distorted” (p. 12), Freud’s “deeply flawed” (p. 79), Bakhtin’s “simply wrong” (p. 357), and Lukács’s “simply... [those] of Communism” (p. 232). Wellek’s anti-historicism is dramatized in essays on Auerbach and his “historical perspectivism” (p. 132), vs. Spitzer who “always saw that there is a point at which historicism must fail” (p. 144). The vacuum of German criticism during the Nazi period is hauntingly demonstrated. The essays on Walter Benjamin, Bertholt Brecht, and in particular György Lukács reveal best Wellek’s notorious feuds with Marxists. Wellek indulges in a sarcastic critique of the Marxist Lukács’s “doctrinaire limitations” (p. 245) and attempts, wrongfully, to “prove” the Hungarian philosopher’s “exaltation of Socialist Realism” (p. 244). When in the mid-eighties and after much encouragement Wellek finally writes an essay on the early Lukács, he... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950Eva L. CorredorA History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950, by René Wellek; xvii & 458 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, $42.50.The seventh volume of René Wellek’s history of modern criticism may well be the most interesting of his eight-volume monumental oeuvre. Devoted to German, (...) Russian, and Eastern European criticism between 1900 and 1950, it exemplifies most strikingly Wellek’s personal battles with critics who were roughly his contemporaries and closest to his own European background. “I should like to think of my History as ‘elucidatory,’ as not ‘argumentative’ or ‘polemical’” (v, xxi), Wellek writes, but he does not shrink from expressing his own critical perspective usually in a gentlemanly humorous or ironical, but occasionally also quite harsh and stubborn fashion. He insists on the importance of individual value judgments in critical analysis, particularly when they are his own: “I do not believe that... my views and those of my contemporaries will be replaced by completely different assumptions” (“Reflections on my History,” The Attack on Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982, p. 145).Since Wellek rejects the idea of a historical determinism and thinks that “an evolutionary history of criticism must fail” (The Attack, p. 144), he provides less a history than a collection of essays in which he offers succinct appraisals of writers, thinkers and critics both as individuals and as participants in the broader literary movements of the century. He presents “portraits” (p. xv), which he also calls “doxographies” (The Attack, p. 143), containing a vast amount of quotations carefully selected to support the authority of his own views or to let them speak for themselves when he would rather not comment.More than any previous work, this volume embodies Wellek’s will and determination to carry on against all odds even when he can no longer do so on his own. An accident in 1986 left him bedridden and dependent on students and secretaries to help him with his research and writing. He was able to draw on a wealth of previously published essays, some of which had been written more than three decades ago. There are some arguable inaccuracies and shortcomings (his canon includes obscure writers but not Adorno and [End Page 259] again no women writers), and problems with his bibliographies and references. Yet Wellek’s unique talent to assemble in one volume half a century of critical commentary on the literatures of half a dozen different cultures appears intact. So do his well-known critical positions.Among his most interesting essays are those on Spitzer, Auerbach, Ingarden, Bakhtin, and Benjamin, highly erudite men in whose company Wellek enjoys moving. On the other hand, some extraordinarily fertile minds and their enormous influence on the post-1950 critical discourse are often quickly dismissed or treated with unnecessary condescension. Young Roman Jakobson “should be forgotten” (p. 372). Freud’s psychoanalysis “seems forced and mistaken” (p. 79). Heidegger “often ascribes a meaning which seems to me absent in the text itself” (p. 89). Wellek’s low tolerance of any but his own interpretation of Dostoevsky appears repeatedly in this volume: Thomas Mann’s views are called “strange” and “distorted” (p. 12), Freud’s “deeply flawed” (p. 79), Bakhtin’s “simply wrong” (p. 357), and Lukács’s “simply... [those] of Communism” (p. 232). Wellek’s anti-historicism is dramatized in essays on Auerbach and his “historical perspectivism” (p. 132), vs. Spitzer who “always saw that there is a point at which historicism must fail” (p. 144). The vacuum of German criticism during the Nazi period is hauntingly demonstrated. The essays on Walter Benjamin, Bertholt Brecht, and in particular György Lukács reveal best Wellek’s notorious feuds with Marxists. Wellek indulges in a sarcastic critique of the Marxist Lukács’s “doctrinaire limitations” (p. 245) and attempts, wrongfully, to “prove” the Hungarian philosopher’s “exaltation of Socialist Realism” (p. 244). When in the mid-eighties and after much encouragement Wellek finally writes an essay on the early Lukács, he... (shrink)

From 1919 to 1929, the great Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács was one of the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party, immersed not simply in theorising but also in significant practical-political work. Along with labour leader Jenö Landler, he led a faction opposing an ultra-left sectarian orientation represented by Béla Kun. If seen in connection with this factional struggle, key works of Lukács in this period – History and Class Consciousness, Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His (...) Thought, Tailism and the Dialectic and ‘The Blum Theses’ – can be seen as forming a consistent, coherent, sophisticated variant of Leninism. Influential readings of these works interpret them as being ultra-leftist or proto-Stalinist. Such readings distort the reality. Lukács’s orientation and outlook of 1923–9 are, rather, more consistent with the orientation advanced by Lenin and Trotsky in the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International. After his decisive political defeat, Lukács concluded that it was necessary to renounce his distinctive political orientation, and completely abandon the terrain of practical revolutionary politics, if he hoped to remain inside the Communist movement. This he did, adapting to Stalinism and shifting his efforts to literary criticism and philosophy. But the theorisations connected to his revolutionary politics of the 1920s continue to have relevance for revolutionary activists of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In the middle of the 19th century the nation building elites using Slovak language have undergone an important political differentiation. One part of previously united emancipatory movment, which has arisen mainly under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy of history and its Štúrian interpretation, formed into a new political-philosophical alternative. Its program was based on the ideas of political philosophy of Ch. Montesquieu, J. S. Mill, J. G. Herders and others. This initiative, called New School, has introduced into the Hungarian (...) political thought a new conception of national equality, which, together with the transformation of political starting points brought about also a transformation of political strategy in attaining the ends of the nation-building. (shrink)

The volume "Beauty and Freedom" contains five papers in Hungarian: “On Aesthetic Freedom: Wit and Humour in the Augustan Age”, “Aphrodite and Eros: Eroticism and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century”, “Beautiful Image and Sublime Appeal: Berkeley and Burke on Language”, “Beauty and Freedom: John Macmurry”, and “Freedom or Beauty: Hannah Arendt”.

The Hungarian émigré Imre Lakatos earned a worldwide reputation through the influential philosophy of science debates involving Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Sir Karl Popper. In _Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason_ John Kadvany shows that embedded in Lakatos’s English-language work is a remarkable historical philosophy rooted in his Hungarian past. Below the surface of his life as an Anglo-American philosopher of science and mathematics, Lakatos covertly introduced novel transformations of Hegelian and Marxist ideas about historiography, skepticism, (...) criticism, and rationality. Lakatos escaped Hungary following the failed 1956 Revolution. Before then, he had been an influential Communist intellectual and was imprisoned for years by the Stalinist regime. He also wrote a lost doctoral thesis in the philosophy of science and participated in what was criminal behavior in all but a legal sense. Kadvany argues that this intellectual and political past animates Lakatos’s English-language philosophy, and that, whether intended or not, Lakatos integrated a penetrating vision of Hegelian ideas with rigorous analysis of mathematical proofs and controversial histories of science. Including new applications of Lakatos’s ideas to the histories of mathematical logic and economics and providing lucid exegesis of many of Hegel’s basic ideas, _Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason_ is an exciting reconstruction of ideas and episodes from the history of philosophy, science, mathematics, and modern political history. (shrink)