circulo lukacs

The background scenery: ‘‘Official’’ Hungarianphilosophy and the Lukacs Circle at the turnof the century

Laszlo Perecz

Published online: 1 February 2008

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract This paper is a background study. It gives an overview of the institu-

tions, 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 Lukacs Circle. The paper discusses the relation of the

Lukacs Circle at the turn of the century to ‘‘official’’ Hungarian philosophy. First,

the introduction portrays the various phases of the evolution of Hungarian institu-

tions of philosophy. Then it sketches the institutional scene at the turn of the

century. Thirdly, it attempts to determine the relation of the Lukacs Circle to the

official academic philosophy, and also sketches some of its aspects after 1919–1920.

Keywords History of Hungarian philosophy � Lukacs Circle �Institutions of Hungarian philosophy � The young Lukacs

Zalai is our man: anti-psychologist, anti-positivist, metaphysical, etc. A clever

and learned man, outside all Hungarian circles (Lukacs 1981: 268).

On Saturdays (recently on Sunday afternoons) there is an all male party at my

house, which can potentially become an academy of the intellect and ethics.

Only serious and metaphysically inclined people get invited (Karadi and

Vezer 1980: 71–72).

I could say, that our ethical and aesthetical convictions are characterized by a

certain normativism—but not to follow the rules of the academy—yet, our

ideology is an idealism aspiring to metaphysics (Karadi and Vezer 1980: 186).

.

L. Perecz (&)

Technical University of Budapest, Pf. 91, Budapest 1521, Hungary

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Stud East Eur Thought (2008) 60:31–43

DOI 10.1007/s11212-008-9050-2

From Apaczai to Alexander

The institutions of Hungarian philosophical scholarship evolved gradually in three

steps: the first was taken in the mid-17th century; the second at the end of the 18th

century; and the third in the 19th century, or perhaps rather at the turn of the 19th

and 20th centuries (Hanak 1990; Meszaros 2000; Perecz 1998, 2004). The first stage

can be linked to a philosophical work, the second to two philosophical debates, and

the third to a philosophical book series. The philosophical work is MagyarEncyclopaedia (Hungarian Encyclopaedia) by Janos Apaczai Csere, the two debates

are the so called Kant and Hegel debates, the book series is the Filozofiai Irok Tara(Philosophical Writers Collection), edited by Bernat Alexander and Jozsef Banoczi.

In the mid-17th century Janos Apaczai Csere published the first philosophical work

in Hungarian, Magyar Encyclopaedia (Hungarian Encyclopaedia), printed in Utrecht

in 1655. It is a textbook; it sums up the period’s scholarship for teaching purposes. Its

language gives its outstanding significance in the history of Hungarian philosophy and

culture: he translates for the first time into Hungarian the ideas of the era, expanding on

the essence of Cartesian epistemology. But practically this enterprise does not exert

any influence. Hungarian academic language did not evolve on the basis of this work;

other Hungarian philosophical works must wait another century to appear.

The philosophical renewal at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th

centuries is linked to the reception of contemporary German philosophy, which is

conducted in the framework of two debates spanning over half a century, the Kant

and Hegel debates. The Kant debate is mainly a denominational clash, the decisive

feature of the subsequent Hegel debate is the awakening of the national ideals of the

romantic period. Both debates are characterized by the lack of an autonomous

philosophical scene: the reception of philosophical thought has no autonomous

sphere in this period, so reception is determined by other dimensions, predominantly

political and moral. The importance of the debates lies in the institutionalization of

the domestic philosophical scene: in its wake, philosophy for the first time finds its

place within Hungarian culture in its own right; moreover Hungarian philosophical

terminology is also strengthened.

The end of the nineteenth and the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries bring the

establishment of Hungarian institutions of philosophy. In the process, philosophy is

given a place of its own on the intellectual scene, the philosophical infrastructure

evolves, and the philosophical language is modernized. Bernat Alexander, an

outstanding figure at the turn of the century, plays an important role in this process.

In his role as an influential teacher and editor, as a widely read publicist and prolific

translator, he is also a central figure on the philosophical scene. The academic book

series, Filozofiai Irok Tara, he co-edited with Jozsef Banoczi, has played a

considerable role in the dissemination of domestic philosophical scholarship.

Universities, academy, philosophical society

The ‘‘official’’ philosophy of the era rests on three institutional pillars: the university

departmental system, the scholarship at the Academy, and on social life (Hell et al.

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2000: 13–34.). The system of university departments provides the traditional

background for philosophical erudition and education. The major university—and

the only existing one until the last third of the nineteenth century—, was the

Pazmany Peter University of Budapest, the successor of the University of

Nagyszombat founded in 1635, which had moved first to Buda, and then to Pest

at the end of the 18th century. To the only chair in philosophy a second was added in

1882, and finally in 1895 a chair in the history of philosophy was also established.

The reforms which started in the 1880s played a formative role in the educational

system spanning the two world wars. In the wake of these reforms, education is

modernised, and on the other hand greater weight is placed on the discipline itself:

the traditional conversatoriums become reading classes, and then turn into seminars

as known today; philosophy becomes a mandatory subject, and an exam in it is

necessary for graduation. The University of Budapest was later joined by three more

in other parts of the country: first was the establishment, by Franz Joseph, of the

University of Kolozsvar in 1872, then in 1912 the Tisza Istvan University of

Debrecen and the Elisabeth University of Pozsony. The University of Budapest had

two features distinguishing it from the others: one is quality, and the other is a

difference in denominational orientation. The departments of Budapest represent

beyond doubt a quality higher than that of the others. Although the departments

outside Budapest were successful in their attempts to establish philosophical

education, and also in funding journals, they remained far behind as far as their staff

and the professional quality of education are concerned. Due to an unwritten but

strictly followed tradition, the chairs at the Budapest departments were occupied by

Catholic professors, those outside Budapest by Protestants. Traditional expectations

explicitly determined the philosophical life of the era and the career possibilities in

the profession.

Academic scholarship, to promote the sciences and the evolution of Hungarian

language, evolved within the framework of the Hungarian Scientific Society—later

acquiring its final name as Hungarian Academy of Sciences—founded in 1825. The

founders, representatives of the romantic movement of national awakening, were

fully aware of the cultural organizational potential that scholarship possessed, and

thus gave philosophy outstanding importance in the foundation of the institution:

out of its six departments, the second was philosophy, immediately after Hungarian

literature and linguistics (Pach 1975). Since the first decades of its existence, the

department fostered Hungarian philosophical scholarship in various ways. Its

programmes and publications played a decisive role in implanting the discipline in

Hungary. Erudite debates were an important part, and learned articles featured

extensively in their publications. One of the very first Hungarian attempts at a

scholarly vocabulary appears within this framework, following a call to collect and

unify the terminology of science (Kornis 1944). As a result, academic life became

pluralized; it was carried out not only within the traditional framework of university

education but also within institutionalized academic scholarship.

Philosophy conducted at the Academy—similar to that at the universities—

started to modernize from the last third of the 19th century. Returning from German

universities, a new philosophical generation brought back not only positivism, but

also the influence of the rising and evolving neo-Kantian tendency. After the

‘‘Official’’ Hungarian philosophy and the Lukacs Circle at the turn of the century 33

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gradual improvement of the institutional background of philosophy, institutional-

ization gained new momentum. A major role was played by Bernat Alexander, both

by his influential professorial role and authoritative editorial work, as well as by his

extensive publications and translations (Gabor 1986). His Kant biography, the first

modern Hungarian monograph in the history of ideas, was published by the

Academy (1881); his study on nineteenth-century pessimism was awarded the

Gorove Medal of the Academy (1884); his inaugural speech was dedicated to the

role that ‘‘national spirit’’ plays in philosophy (1893).

However, his main contribution to the development and unification of the still

uncertain Hungarian philosophical terminology, and to the institutionalization of

academic life was undoubtedly the aforementioned publication series, FilozofiaiIrok Tara. The series started in 1881 and continued over four decades until 1919,

and comprises 29 volumes: from Plato through Aristotle, Bruno, Descartes, Pascal,

Spinoza, Hume, Diderot, and Kant to Schopenhauer, providing modern translations

of numerous classics in the history of ideas. The series was a success, with many

volumes having to be reprinted. It was mostly due to this enterprise that a

philosophically minded reading public was born at the turn of the century. The birth

of a philosophical life grew out of the interaction of authors and readers.

The traditional university and academic philosophy of the reform age were

complemented by the creation of a philosophical society at the turn of the century.

After lengthy press debates and decades of preparation, the Hungarian Philosophical

Society was founded in 1901. The initiators—mostly secondary school teachers

with some familiarity with scholarly publications—felt constricted and alienated by

the official institutional system, for which reason they came on the scene with sharp

criticisms. The essence of the process, however, following the foundation of the

society, was that the society itself, created with the intention of breaking the

institutional status quo, slowly became part and a parcel of the status quo. At the

beginning, the situation was characterized by the predominant philosophical elite’s

absence among the officials of the Society, or by them becoming members without

playing an active part. Finally, one and a half decades later, following the

aforementioned Bernat Alexander’s election to the presidency, they begin to take an

active part in its life. Although during the preparatory debate there was a proposal

that the Society should be characterized by positivist orientation, the Society’s rules

did not require any particular philosophical orientation: they refer to the cultivation

and propagation of general philosophical disciplines, the introduction of philo-

sophical thinking to other disciplines, and theoretical discussions on publicly

debated subjects. The main forms of organisational work consisted in public talks

and debates, popular educational lecture series, and the publication of books and

journals.

As to the salient philosophical stream of the era, the hegemony of positivism was

evident in the institutional system. This hegemony tended to weaken only during the

first decades of the new century. Positivism, as is well known, was by then past its

zenith in Europe: after half a century of hegemony, its influence waned beginning in

the 1870s. Philosophical thinking began gradually to be dominated in part by neo-

Kantianism and in part by various philosophies of life. In Hungary, this was exactly

the period when, in the 1890s, the third wave of its reception sets in: it served as the

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basis of the sociological argument supporting civic aspirations, and as the

foundation of the theory of analytical methodology. Thus the most influential

philosophy in public thought was anti-metaphysical, scientific, self-confidently

positivist, advocating the ideal of a unified science, and taking the natural sciences

as the epistemological ideal.

The positivist hegemony began to weaken only in the new century. The turn of

the century saw simultaneously the emerging influence of various streams of anti-

positivist ‘‘new idealisms.’’ Nietzsche’s reception intensified, Bergson’s was

beginning, neo-Kantianism and the various streams of existential philosophies

proliferated, Bolzano’s logic, Meinong’s Gegenstandstheorie, and Husserl’s

phenomenology found followers. The career of the most influential ‘‘school

philosopher’’ at the turn of the century, and that of the best placed official

philosopher of the inter-war period, are representative of this transformation. The

former is Karoly Bohm, who followed the transformation of continental philosophy

at the end of the century, attempting to reconcile Kantianism and positivism by

working from a positivist-anti-metaphysical system towards a new metaphysical

idealism related to the aspirations of the Baden neo-Kantians’ philosophy of value

(Ungvary Zrınyi 2002). The latter, Akos Pauler, started as a positivist, then through

neo-Kantianism and the pure logic of Platonism he arrived at the religious concept

of the absolute (Somos 1999).

‘‘Counter-Culture’’ and ‘‘New Idealism’’

The sketch of the situation within Hungarian philosophy shows clearly that Gyorgy

Lukacs at the beginning of his career stood deliberately apart from the entire

institutional system, and that he did not join any institutional endeavour.

Contemporary Hungarian philosophy, despite the success of its institutions, was

considerably behind the western mainstream (mainly German philosophy); its

central positivist stream can be regarded as belated. Neither Lukacs’ personal

ambitions, nor his spiritual aspirations or his philosophical convictions fit into the

institutional framework of the epoch. Lukacs began his career, after some futile

attempts at literature, as an impressionistically-minded theatre critic. He continued

his studies in the faculty of law instead of the Humanities. In his pre-Marxist period

he wavered between a systematic philosophical-scientific orientation and an

essayist-literary orientation (Congdon 1983; Kadarkay 1991).

His most important undertakings—first the journal A Szellem (The Spirit),

followed by the organization of the Sunday Circle—can be characterised by a

twofold concept. Institutionally they represent a kind of ‘‘counter-culture’’: they are

based on the staunch criticism of the established institutional system. On the other

hand, they represent a consciously anti-positivist, or ‘‘new idealist’’ orientation.

They are based on strident criticism of the contemporary official positivist

philosophy.

As to the ‘‘counter-cultural’’ orientation, let us note quickly that this endeavour

was characteristic not only of the Lukacs Circle, it also characterized wide circles of

Hungarian culture and society at the beginning of the century. Many literary,


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scientific, and erudite endeavours began with statements against the empty and

alienated institutional system (Gluck 1985). The most outstanding manifestation in

the literary field was the new literary journal, Nyugat (West). Numerous newly

established scientific disciplines also belonged to this current: among them the

recently institutionalized radical, social-democratically oriented sociology along

with its most important institution, the Society for the Social Sciences and its main

organ Huszadik Szazad (20th century); and a rapidly modernizing psychology with

the psychoanalytic movement in the forefront. Similar steps were taken in

philosophy, partly by the wider circle forming around Lukacs, partly by authors

outside it: Bela Zalai, an extremely original metaphysical thinker, who died young

as a prisoner of war in 1915, was described while still alive by Lukacs as ‘‘the only

original Hungarian thinker.’’ He turned initially to phenomenology, experimented

later with holistic object theory, and ended with an attempt at a general theory of

taxonomy that remained a fragment. Leo Popper, for a few years Lukacs’ closest

friend, likewise died at a young age, leaving behind highly original fragments of

writings in which he attempted to bypass the formal theory of the study of ideas.

From this counter-culture came many intellectuals who earned international fame

following their emigration, among them Karoly Mannheim, who was working on a

metaphysical theory of culture, Vilmos Szilasi, who outlined a platonic theory of

art, Mihaly Polanyi, who apart from his studies in natural science wrote radical

essays, Karoly Polanyi, who published social-economic surveys as part of his left-

wing activities, and Aurel Kolnai who wrote on sociology and psychoanalysis.

Lukacs’ first enterprise, A Szellem is obviously linked to his failure to find an

appropriate forum for his aspirations. The two decisive organs of the official

philosophy were Athenaeum, the journal of philosophy and political science of the

Academy, and A Magyar Filozofiai Tarsasag Kozlemenyei (Proceedings of the

Hungarian Philosophical Society). Lukacs most probably regarded the first as an

organ of shallow positivism, and the latter as a sad manifestation of backward

scholarship; thus he published in neither. Finally, years later, in 1918, one of his

essays appeared in the new Athenaeum, transformed into a periodical of

considerably higher quality under Alexander’s editorship. The essay, previously

published in Logos, is a somewhat weak Hungarian translation of a chapter from the

Heidelberg Aesthetics, ‘‘The Relation of Subject and Object in Aesthetics.’’ At the

same time, he was in close touch with the periodicals of the counter culture, but

none of them became the vehicle of his own voice, although for very different

reasons. The two most influential periodicals in this circle were the aforementioned

sociology journal, Huszadik Szazad, and the literary journal Nyugat. Lukacs

published numerous essays in them, though neither can be regarded as his own

‘‘intellectual home.’’ The positivist outlook, liberal evolutionism, the altogether

optimistic ideology of Huszadik Szazad, and the impressionistic subjectivism and

relativism of Nyugat were antithetical to him (Vezer 1980: 16–23.). There was only

one journal, Renaissance that he was able profoundly to influence in 1910, when his

close friend Bela Balazs took up the editorship of the critical and literary section,

but he broke the connection after only a few months (Fekete et al. 1981: 20–22.).

After this course of events his only journal, A Szellem, appeared in 1911. He

coedited it with Lajos Fulep taking as a model Logos, a contemporary German

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journal. The editors emphasized independence from the official university-academic

scholarship, and their aim was twofold: to propagate domestic (i.e. Hungarian)

philosophical culture and to promote the spread of the new anti-positivistic

metaphysical idealism. In their view, the two objectives were not separate but

closely related: they held anti-metaphysical positivism responsible for the lack of a

rich and lively philosophical culture, and they expected the new metaphysics to put

an end to this deficiency.

The translations appearing in the journal clearly demonstrated the joint

aspirations of the aspiring philosophical culture, as well as the program of the

new metaphysics, the new idealism: Vilmos Szilasi translated Plotinus, Bela Balazs

Meister Eckhart, and Karoly Mannheim Hegel. Contemporary philosophy was

represented by Boutroux, Bergson’s master, with a sharp anti-naturalist piece; by

Chesterton with extracts from a fideist book that identifies truth and catholic

dogmatism, and by Ziegler with a book chapter that argues against Kant’s

interpretation of empirical psychology. The self-defining, characteristic articles

were written by the two editors and Bela Zalai. Fulep, in his study of Croce’s

aesthetics, derived the functions of art from the functions of memory stressing the

difference between the natural world and the world of cultural forms. Lukacs

published here his famous essay, ‘‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy,’’ presenting, on the

one hand, an existentialist survey of the cultural crisis and, on the other, a literary

dialogue ‘‘on Spiritual Poverty,’’ on the conflict between life and art. Zalai appeared

in these pages with a meta-philosophical tract, ‘‘The Problem of Methodology in

Philosophy,’’ an attempt to lay the foundations for a proper philosophical

methodology.

A Szellem proved to be short lived. It did not survive its first year: it started early

in 1911 and ceased to appear before the end of that year (the first issue was

published in March, and was followed by only a second in December). The journal,

which was intended to follow the anti-positivistic metaphysical turn in European

philosophy, and was synchronized to international tendencies and foreign trends,

suffocated in total intellectual and financial lack of interest. Its rapid demise was due

to technical problems and conflicting views. The editors both worked abroad, Fulep

in Italy, Lukacs in Germany, so they had difficulties running a journal in Hungary.

Moreover Fulep’s spiritual-Nietzschean convictions were increasingly difficult to

reconcile with Lukacs’ recent systematic approach to classical German philosophy

following his essay period (Karadi 1985: 1–5.).

Lukacs’ other significant endeavour, the Sunday Circle had two antecedents. The

new venture can be regarded, on the one hand, as the heir to A Szellem: the

conversations of the participants and the basic aspirations of the group were

reminiscent of it. The venture, on the other hand, is inseparable from the influence

of similar circles within German intellectual life. It followed both the examples of

Simmel’s private seminars in Berlin and Max Weber’s philosophical society in

Heidelberg. Lukacs attended both during his years in Germany (Karadi 1985: 5–

33.). Finally, this group appeared as well as the manifestation of the counter-culture,

a forum for the anti-positivistic ‘‘new idealism.’’ It was a friendly assembly of a new

generation finding its way within Hungarian progressivism.


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As A Szellem can be taken as an experiment to establish a journal missing from

the intellectual scene, the Sunday Circle, mutatis mutandis, criticized the

philosophical activities of the official academic institutional system. Just as Lukacs

found no journal suitable to his own purposes, neither could he find a place for

himself in the official institutional system. Originally, as I mentioned above, he had

followed the typical way of the period by becoming a student of law: he had studied

in Budapest and took his exams in Kolozsvar. Only at the conclusion of his law

studies in 1906 did he begin literary studies: he spent first one trimester in Berlin,

and then four semesters in Budapest. He passed his final exam in the autumn of

1909; his major being aesthetics with minors in German and English literature. He

attempted to acquire the Habilitation with his drama book, supported by Bernat

Alexander, at the Budapest University, and also in Heidelberg with his early

aesthetics, following Max Weber’s advice. Both were unsuccessful: his request was

rejected in Budapest in 1911 and in Heidelberg in 1918. Both failures can be

explained most probably by the petty formal excuses on the part of his examiners,

but Lukacs’ ambivalent theoretical perspective can also be part of the explanation.

During his formative years, he vacillated between essayistic and ‘‘scientific’’

philosophy, between the metaphysical mode of inquiry into great old philosophies

and deliberately restricted analysis of partial problems in ‘‘scientific’’ philosophy

(Bendl 1994; Karadi 1985: 23–27.). The friends and acquaintances of his youth, like

Ernst Bloch or Max Weber, or students of his old age, like Agnes Heller, noted more

than once that his unusually excellent talent as a lecturer did not fit the

contemporary institutional system.

The Sunday Circle met from the autumn of 1915. Meetings took place every

Sunday afternoon, hence the name ‘Sundayers,’ at Bela Balazs’ flat, after Lukacs

had been obliged to leave Heidelberg. Participants thought of the circle as an ‘‘ideal

intellectual academy.’’ The gatherings did not have fixed subjects or appointed

lecturers: someone started to talk about a subject, the others joined in with remarks,

and the ensuing debate continued well into the night. Conversation in the Circle was

spontaneous, but the meetings flowed in specified directions. Guests had

metaphysical interests; new members could join only by being nominated, every

member having veto rights. The best known participants, apart from Lukacs and

Bela Balazs, were Frigyes Antal, Bela Fogarasi, as well as Arnold Hauser and

Karoly Mannheim, both belonging to the younger generation, new graduates

nicknamed ‘‘knabas’’ by the others. Lajos Fulep joined the group later, along with

the even younger Karoly Tolnay. Occasionally Karoly Polanyi, Mihaly Polanyi,

Jozsef Revai, Bela Bartok, and Zoltan Kodaly joined the conversation.

By the beginning of 1917 the meetings, which at first were not in any sense

organized, became increasingly institutionalized: the Sunday Circle becomes the

Free School of the Humanistic Sciences (Szellemi Tudomanyok Szabad Iskolaja).

The new program was entitled ‘‘Lectures on the Human Sciences’’ and it aimed to

propagate the ideologies of ‘‘new spiritualism’’ and ‘‘idealism’’ though decidedly

not in a popularizing vein. The lecturers of the School typically belonged to the

Circle; new members were only Ervin Szabo and Elek Bolgar. The first semester’s

lecture program, starting from the spring of 1917, included Bela Balazs on

dramaturgy, Bela Fogarasi on the theory of philosophical thinking, Fulep on the

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problems of the national characteristics of Hungarian art, Hauser on aesthetic

problems following Kant, Lukacs on ethics, and Mannheim on epistemological and

logical problems. The second semester, starting a year later in February 1918, was

introduced by Mannheim’s lecture on ‘‘Soul and Culture,’’ followed by Bela Balazs

on lyrical sensibility, and Mannheim again on the analysis of epistemological

systems, Lukacs on aesthetics, Fogarasi on methods in the history of ideas, Hauser

on artistic dilettantism, Frigyes Antal on the evolution of subject and composition in

modern painting, Ervin Szabo on the ultimate questions of Marxism, Kodaly on

Hungarian folk music, and Bartok on relations between modern and folk music.

In order to address a wider audience, they thought first about publishing a

yearbook, which was actually an older plan, but then they considered publishing the

lectures as booklets. The plan for the series ‘‘Lectures from The Library of the

Human Sciences’’ included Mannheim’s Soul and Culture, Balazs’ Dramaturgy,

Lukacs’s theory of the novel, a monograph by Fogarasi as well as Zalai’s

philosophical studies.

In 1918 the idea emerged of transforming the School into a faculty of a counter-

university of the human sciences. This would have merged the School with another

important organization, namely the open school of the Society of Social Sciences,

directed by sociologists outside the official institutional system. Due to escalating

political events, i.e. the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the rise and

fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, this never happened. The planned counter-

university lost its envisaged function, with many of its lecturers first becoming

professors at the University of Budapest and later going into exile.

The ideology of both the Sunday Circle and the subsequent Free School of the

Human Sciences can be called a kind of ethical idealism (Karadi 1980: 27.). Deeply

ingrained within the conscious anti-positivism and anti-impressionism of both

organizations, it involved a dualist worldview arising from the opposition of

‘‘ordinary life’’ and the real ‘‘world of values.’’ However, it was not expressed in the

form of a methodological–theoretical analysis: it appeared at times in the formal

framework of Kantian philosophy, at other times in existential philosophy. The

dualist construction was most subtle in Lukacs: in his network of metaphysical

concepts ‘life’ and ‘soul’ stand opposed to one another. Life is ordinary, inauthentic

existence, while soul is real, authentic existence. Life is the world of mechanical

forces external to human beings, the dead realm of the necessities of institutions and

conventions. Soul is the substance of the human world and authentic individuality: it

thus represents the unrepeatable and irreplaceable seed which gives every

personality its intrinsic value (Markus 1977). This opposition determined the

aesthetic, ethical, and political ideas of the group. From an aesthetic point of view it

inspired a concept of art which grew out of, but also transcended love. In ethics it

meant the opposition of Kantian ethics of duty and Dostoevsky’s ethics of life. In

politics, it initially meant the sharp rejection of the political as belonging to the

aforementioned inauthentic sphere of life, but then, for several outstanding members

of the group, it resulted in the acceptance of Bolshevik politics promising a total

transformation of reality (Kettler 1967: 18–27.).


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After 1919–1920

The revolutionary crisis of 1919, i.e. the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, and

the division of historical Hungarian territories in 1920, not only resulted in a sudden

interruption of political and social evolution, it also changed the conditions in

philosophy. Essentially, it meant that the breach between official academia and the

wider intellectual life had been reopened. This breach in the history of ideas was the

consequence of the counter-revolutionary ‘‘cultural reconstruction.’’ (Lacko 1981)

Consequently, the ideological field from Marxism to civic radicalism to liberalism

was considered officially undesirable. In academic life, the persecution of entire

disciplines began: radical sociology and psychology from the beginning of the

century were placed beyond the realm of possible discourse during the following

decades. Communist politicians of the Soviet Republic and civil intellectuals

playing any role in it were compelled to emigrate—inside or outside Hungary.

Besides Lukacs, from among the authors of A Szellem and the members of the

Sunday Circle, Bela Balazs, Vilmos Szilasi, Karoly Mannheim, Karoly Tolnay,

Arnold Hauser, Bela Fogarasi, Mihaly Polanyi, and Karoly Polanyi fled abroad

(Congdon 1991), Lajos Fulep found refuge as a provincial priest. The boundary

between official academia and the broader intellectual life was eradicated: the

academic disciplines took an inward turn; their representatives did not participate in

intellectual life—ideological debates of wider interest, now the scene of intellectual

life even more than at the turn of the century, took place almost exclusively in

literary circles. Philosophy was allowed even less intellectual space than the social

sciences: notably enough, it was not philosophy which reflected on recent

cataclysms but history and the historiography of literature.

This situation, so markedly typical of the twenties, gradually changed in the

thirties. The breach between the official academic scholarship and lively intellectual

life slowly began to close for several reasons. In the thirties the official ideology lost

momentum; the atmosphere of crisis pluralized intellectual life; members of a more

liberal generation appeared on the scene; universities in the provinces came to

maturity. Meanwhile, let us note that universities from the detached territories were

moved to cities inside the new boundaries: Pozsony University to Pecs, the one in

Kolozsvar to Szeged. This revitalization could be felt within official academic

philosophy too, first of all in the institutional system of the academia, and to a lesser

extent in the wider intellectual life as well.

At the same time the anti-liberal turn of the ‘‘cultural reconstruction’’ also

affected general trends. The ‘‘official’’ liberal positivism turned into anti-liberal

idealism. The counter-culture of the beginning of the century disappeared due to the

forced emigration of the new idealists, while their new idealism became the official

direction (Perecz 2001; Somos 2004).

On closer inspection, a wider approach to the perception of periodicity started to

dominate intellectual history. Geistesgeschichte began to transform fin-de-sieclenew idealism into a philosophy of history and culture. The new idealism of the

beginning of the century was an integrative concept bringing together a variety of

trends belonging to the common ground of anti-positivism: from late neo-Kantian

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value theory through Dilthey’s philosophy, the Bolzano school of logic, and

Husserl’s phenomenology to Meinong’s theory of objects

This was the new idealism which had been transformed into a systematic

philosophy of history and culture. It has to be reiterated that this enterprise was only

partially successful. On the one hand, it did not solidify into a kind of closed and

unified intellectual school; rather it remained a loose conglomerate of methodo-

logical reflections concerning culture and history. On the other hand, periodization

was its dominant and exclusive outlook: it had to face institutional conservative

academic erudition until the late thirties, and thereafter the new school of sociology.

The thirties brought in a significant period for Geistesgeschichte in two respects:

the trend reached its zenith, and at the same time it had to face the loss of its own

plausibility. In the process two historical projects played significant role; as well

they played a considerable role in the wider intellectual scene and within the learned

society. One was a representative collection edited by Balint Homan, the

medievalist and culture politician, on ‘‘the new ways of Hungarian historical

writing.’’ The other was a vast synthesis of Hungarian history, written by Homan

jointly with Gyula Szekf}u, the most outstanding historian of the era, which remains

the most notable historical summary in Hungarian historiography (Lacko 1988:

75–88.).

The loss of the plausibility of Geistesgeschichte, due to forces challenging the

discourse that was only beginning to become popular amongst the wider public, was

witnessed by a debate that appeared on the pages of Protestans Szemle (Protestant

Survey). The debate took place in 1938 between ‘‘neopositivism’’ and Geist-esgeschichte, the first represented by a young historian, Geza Istvanyi, a student of

the influential historian Istvan Hajnal, the second by Tibor Joo. This controversy

arose from easily identifiable motifs and conflicting viewpoints, not to mention a

conflict of generations and a political motif as well. The approach of the previous

generation, i.e. Geistesgeschichte, appeared to be the specific product of the official

idealism of the counter-revolutionary period. The younger generation expressed

reservations about the explanatory capacities of Geistesgeschichte, and they accused

it of relativism and subjectivism. But the deepest dimension of the debate was an

emerging new conceptual paradigm of history as an alternative to Geist-esgeschichte. Hajnal’s influence can be recognized here.

For the new generation the emphasis on objectivity, the ‘‘neue Sachlichkeit,’’

opposed the slogan, strictly in quotes, of ‘‘neopositivism.’’ For them, Geist-esgeschichte was successful in overcoming the emptiness of positivism, but due to

its origins in an idealist philosophy it led to subjectivism and relativism.

‘‘Neopositivism’’ had then to preserve the synthetic character of Geistesgeschichtebut also to bring it closer to reality (Kovacs 2004). Although Hajnal did not take a

stand in the debate, it turned on the interpretation of his views. Istvanyi’s arguments

for ‘‘neopositivism’’ derived from Hajnal’s interpretation of history: he regarded it

as the approach which provides sociology, not philosophy, with a historical

methodology, considering history to be the story of social ‘‘structures.’’ He thus

contributes to breaking the hegemony of Geistesgeschichte based on an approach

provided by sociology, that is, a structuralist approach, and which is embedded in

the history of communication and technology (Nyıri 1994).


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