The book brings a collection of papers by Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian philosophers. It is... more The book brings a collection of papers by Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian philosophers. It is a second book published on the basis of international reserach project entitled "Central-European Ethos Or Local Traditions: Freedom, Responsibility, Equality, Justice", International Visegrad Fund's standard grant No. 20820190.
Az írás tárgya a két világháború magyar nemzetkarakterológiákban kirajzolódó modernitáskoncepció(... more Az írás tárgya a két világháború magyar nemzetkarakterológiákban kirajzolódó modernitáskoncepció(k) sajátos szerkezete. A téma kibontásához szükséges azoknak a kontextusoknak legalább jelzésszerű felvázolása, melyekbe a korszak hazai nemzetkarakterológiája beágyazódik. A korabeli nemzetkarakterológiai irodalommind a magyar mind pedig a nemzetközi-szorosan kapcsolódik-a kultúrkritikai-modernitáskritikai attitűddel átitatott-ún. válságfilozófiához, amely nemigen választható el a német konzervatív
Methods. This study to be based on field research and review of available literature will look at... more Methods. This study to be based on field research and review of available literature will look at the impact of generational gap on the older people and their dependants in Zambia. In 2014 a survey was conducted among students of University of Zambia. Respondents were unevenly divided by gender and ranged from 18 to 35 years. The information was collected through direct personal interview method using a pre-designed questionnaire comprising 40 items that the respondents had to fill in (electronically or on paper). Results. The data obtained suggest that elder abuse should not be seen as a monolithic phenomenon. Instead, it should be seen as a multifaceted phenomenon which takes place in many forms. Thus, social workers dealing with elder abuse issues should learn to unpack the phenomenon of elder abuse. Also the results suggest one cannot think of elder people as a homogeneous group of people. Instead, they should always be assessed as a heterogeneous group of people, and relevant and adequate understanding and/or intervening in any elder abuse situation should involve careful and critical examination of the particular elder person who has suffered particular type (s) of abuse by in-depth exploring the various characteristics of the respective elder persons. Conclusions. The results of the study support the idea that approaching any elder abuse situation with already pre-packed explanations or interventions cannot work. Perceived from these perspectives, it suggests that elder abuse explanations or interventions should be informed by what it called local soils. That is, the real, specific and contextual situations obtaining on the ground at that particular time are the ones that should inform ways of understanding and addressing the particular elder abuse situation.
/ Hannah Arendt Amerikában, emigrációját követően vált a 20. századi politikai filozófia egyik le... more / Hannah Arendt Amerikában, emigrációját követően vált a 20. századi politikai filozófia egyik legismertebb alakjává, ám intellektuális szocializációja az első világháborút követő másfél évtized Németországában, a weimari köztársaság sajátos közegében ment végbe. Filozófiája kétségkívül magán viseli a hitleri hatalomátvételig tartó periódus politikaiszellemi klímájának hatását, befolyásolva gondolkodásának mélyszerkezetét. Ez mindenekelőtt politikai filozófiája modernitásképében érhető tetten, amely-jóllehet az idő múlásával egyre halványabban-magán viseli a weimari korszak kultúrkritikájának sajátos jegyeit. Jelen írás célja annak vizsgálata, hogy Arendt egymást követő alkotói periódusaiban miképpen viszonyul ahhoz a weimari örökséghez, amely kétségkívül intellektuális poggyászának legfőbb tartalmát jelentette, amikor emigránsként Amerikát választotta új hazájának. Vajon igaza van-e Renate Holubnak, 2 amikor úgy véli, hogy Arendt gondolkodói stílusát mindvégig alapvetően meghatározta a hajdani weimari akadémiai mandarin-elit tagjaként elsajátított attitűd? 3 A weimari modernitás Az, hogy a fogalmat többes számban használva, modernitásokról kell beszélni, ma már szakirodalmi közhelynek számít; számos helyi változat van, s a modernitás mint univerzális jelenség ezeknek az összessége. A weimari modernitás egy olyan meghatározott gazdaságitársadalmi-politikai-kulturális modell, amely szorosan kapcsolódik a német történelem egy jól meghatározott periódusához. Talán legfőbb sajátossága a kortárs mentalitást mélyen átható és a kultúrkritikai attitűdöt megalapozó Unbehagen, a modern világgal szembeni ellenérzés. A korabeli kultúrkritikát artikuláló konzervatív forradalom egyik meghatározó reprezentánsának A szerző az MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpontja Filozófiai Intézetének főmunkatársa;
Gábor Kovács: "…for silent amongst rogues, I share their vice"-the road of the interwar Hungarian... more Gábor Kovács: "…for silent amongst rogues, I share their vice"-the road of the interwar Hungarian Jewry to the Shoa from the anti-Jewish legislation to the deportation
Istvan Bibó was the clandestine politological authority during the late Kadar period, and was red... more Istvan Bibó was the clandestine politological authority during the late Kadar period, and was rediscovered after the fall of communism. The essay examines and reconstructs the notions of elite and legitimation in Bibó's political philosophy. As a young thinker he confronted the value crisis between the two world wars. He was influenced by Oswald Spengler's and Ortega y Gasset's theories of elites. The essay analyses the similarities and differences in their views. In Bibó's conceptual world, the theory of elites is connected with the issue of legitimation, because in his opinion the crisis of elites always results in a crisis of legitimation. Bibó's analysis of elites, their social responsibilities as well as the types of legitimization are highly instructive for us since they help us rethink our conceptions of the social roles of elites and political legitimation under conditions of globalisation. KEY WORDS: Istvan Bibó, value crisis, elites, sense of social responsibilities, types of legitimation, humanization of power István Bibó (1911-1979) was one of Central Europe's most profound thinkers in recent history. It is not an easy task to define his field of interest. Was he a historian or a legal scientist, a political thinker, maybe a politician? He was all and none. In his early works, he was interested mostly in legal sciences. Between 1935 and 1944, he wrote a series of essays concerned with jurisprudence. They predicted the direction in which he was to turn after the Second World War. In 1935 he published an essay entitled Coercion, Law and Liberty [Kényszer, jog, szabadság]. 2 In this work, the young legal scientist investigated the relation between the three factors listed in the title. In his interpretation, coercion and liberty do not exclude one another. Moreover, they exist in a complementary relationship: coercion cannot eliminate or destroy liberty because someone under very strict pressure or coerced to do something is not deprived totally of a modicum of liberty. However, liberty is an inner
Modernity, in philosophical and sociological literature, has “traditionally” been presented as th... more Modernity, in philosophical and sociological literature, has “traditionally” been presented as the age when artifacts supplant nature and destroy the originally given natural environment. The process of modernization, from this point of view, is the process of de-naturalization. This widely shared conviction has basically been questioned by Hannah Arendt. During the centuries of modern age, in the detriment of the commonly created and uphold human world, process of re-naturalization has been taking place, Arendt argues. This means, from other aspect, that modernity is the age of world-alienation. It is one of the results of modern science that human beings lose their confidence in the reliability of their senses. The Arendtian critique of modernity, which has deeply been influenced by Martin Heidegger's philosophy, takes a difference between the notions of Earth and world. In Arendt's theory technology enhances the processes of re-naturalization. The problem of the relation ...
The phenomenon of anti-urbanism has accompanied the process of modernisation since the emergence ... more The phenomenon of anti-urbanism has accompanied the process of modernisation since the emergence of modernity. The city, the modern metropolis played a vital role in this transition from premodern world to modern era. The metamorphosis of archaic structures, including the fields of economy, society and thinking, are inevitably associated with tensions engendering aversion against the city. Anti-urbanism appeared sporadically everywhere, as a continuous tradition, it emerged at two remote corners of the world: in United States and Germany. Hungarian anti-urbanism of the interwar period had been motivated by the shock of the disintegration of the “Historical Greater Hungary”. The motif of guilty city emerged in the atmosphere of scapegoating: Budapest appeared as incompatible with Hungarian national character. These ruminations about the role of city were embedded in a special context mixing city-philosophy, cultural criticism, German-origin crisis philosophy, political philosophy and...
In The Human Condition (1959), which is mentioned as her opus magnum, Arendt gives a political on... more In The Human Condition (1959), which is mentioned as her opus magnum, Arendt gives a political ontology applying a phenomenological method; she blends the chronological explanation with a conceptual analysis. The axis of thought train is the private-public distinction put in a historical framework. The feminist authors warn us, that this distinction is not a neutral analytical instrument but an abstraction deduced from the reality of the antique patriarchal society. At the same time, Arendt, in other feminist interpretations is a forerunner of feminism who, in her biography written on Rahel Varnhagen, a Jewish woman of Berlin in the first half of the 19 th century, created a role model of modern woman who dared to risk of entering the light of the public realm that had previously been dominated by males and, in her Berlin saloon, offered an alternative space where the women were peers of men. The pro-Arendt feminist interpreters assert, the Arendtian philosophy outlines the possibility for a no male-dominated, really democratic public realm. The political philosophy of Hannah Arendt has been flavored by a history of decline. The beginning of the modernity, in this interpretation, is the moment of derailment. During the centuries of modernity, step by step, the division lines between private and public spheres disappear. Lasting institutions, warranting the public sphere, dissolve in the never-ending procession of material production: everything becomes fluid: culture and politics change into the objects of the everwidening cycles of consumption devouring whole reality and the intimacy, conquering and distorting the emptied public realm, creates proper constellation for totalitarian political practices.
Bibó Istvánt 1956 után kettős érzület vette körül. Az'56 mellett elkötelezettek, majd a demo... more Bibó Istvánt 1956 után kettős érzület vette körül. Az'56 mellett elkötelezettek, majd a demokratikus ellenzék egyfajta" Szent tehén"-ként kezelte, megkérdőjelezhetetlen morális tekintélyként tisztelte [1]. E tekintetben 1979-ben bekövetkezett halála sem okozott változást: Bibó tisztelete töretlen maradt. A morális tekintély, Bibó háttérbe szorítottsága annak is kedvezett, hogy az erkölcsi súly intellektuális erővé is váljék-nézeteit sok esetben kritikamentesen illett kezelni. Természetesen ebben szerepet játszott az is, hogy a szólás ...
The theory of Béla Hamvas on Hungarian national character is one of the less known aspects of his... more The theory of Béla Hamvas on Hungarian national character is one of the less known aspects of his oeuvre concentrating upon the question of self-redemption with the help of ancient esoteric wisdom hidden in the holy books of different world religions. The paper puts the conception of Hamvas concerning national character into the interwar Hungarian and European context giving special emphasis to the German thought. The main hypothesis that national characterology was a reaction to the modernity-crisis of the interwar period that culminated in totalitarianism. Hamvas wasn't an exception to the rule in this respect: his national characterology had been intertwined with his cultural criticism: the core of his theory was the resacralization of soulless, profanized modernity. This is true for the theories of László Németh, János Kodolányi and Sándor Karácsony.
The paper’s aim is a critical reconstruction concerning the ideas of the most renowned representa... more The paper’s aim is a critical reconstruction concerning the ideas of the most renowned representatives of the Hungarian Popular Movement: László Németh, Ferenc Erdei, and István Bibó. It contextualizes the notion of “populism”, which has semantically become overburdened up to now: it means everything and nothing. The Hungarian Populist Movement must be interpreted in the interwar Central-Eastern European and Hungarian contexts. The notion of dual society was a catchword for the abovementioned thinkers; according to its basic tenet, in Hungarian society, there is a symbiosis of modern and premodern segments. The demand for emancipation of the peasantry as a common denominator was frequently connected with the idea of alternative modernization; it was imagined as an autochthonous development different from the Western European models.
O. Spengler was one of the leading protagonists of cultural criticism in the 20th century. His oe... more O. Spengler was one of the leading protagonists of cultural criticism in the 20th century. His oeuvre had been rooted in the German intellectual climate of the pre-war period and war years. The German tradition based on an ambivalent relation to modernity, after the German defeat suffered at the end of the First World War, emerged as the movement of ‘conservative revolution’. This new kind of conservatism, on the one hand, enthusiastically greeted technological advancement, while, on the other hand, rejected social and political modernization. The opposition of the city and the country-side was a central theme of this way of thought. Spengler in his ‘morphology of world history’ gave an outstanding place to this opposition. Our paper offers a reconstruction, in this respect, of the theory of Spengler. Santrauka O. Spengleris buvo vienas iš svarbiausių XX a. kultūros kritikos atstovų. Jo kūryba buvo įšaknyta vokiečių ikikarinio laikotarpio ir karo metų intelektualinėje atmosferoje. V...
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies
The critique of the city is an almost obligatory cliché of the 20thcentury cultural criticism. Th... more The critique of the city is an almost obligatory cliché of the 20thcentury cultural criticism. This paper offers a parallel critical analysis of the conceptions of American ecologist Lewis Mumford and Hungarian historian István Hajnal. They were contemporaries, and their approaches had been inspired by interwar cultural criticism. Mumford did not hate the city: it was, for him, the engine of history, a reservoir of cultural creativeness. The theory of Hajnal, from many aspects, runs parallel with Mumford’s – moreover, the Hungarian historian gives a detailed theory on the types of European city. What connects them is an ecological approach.
The book brings a collection of papers by Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian philosophers. It is... more The book brings a collection of papers by Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian philosophers. It is a second book published on the basis of international reserach project entitled "Central-European Ethos Or Local Traditions: Freedom, Responsibility, Equality, Justice", International Visegrad Fund's standard grant No. 20820190.
Az írás tárgya a két világháború magyar nemzetkarakterológiákban kirajzolódó modernitáskoncepció(... more Az írás tárgya a két világháború magyar nemzetkarakterológiákban kirajzolódó modernitáskoncepció(k) sajátos szerkezete. A téma kibontásához szükséges azoknak a kontextusoknak legalább jelzésszerű felvázolása, melyekbe a korszak hazai nemzetkarakterológiája beágyazódik. A korabeli nemzetkarakterológiai irodalommind a magyar mind pedig a nemzetközi-szorosan kapcsolódik-a kultúrkritikai-modernitáskritikai attitűddel átitatott-ún. válságfilozófiához, amely nemigen választható el a német konzervatív
Methods. This study to be based on field research and review of available literature will look at... more Methods. This study to be based on field research and review of available literature will look at the impact of generational gap on the older people and their dependants in Zambia. In 2014 a survey was conducted among students of University of Zambia. Respondents were unevenly divided by gender and ranged from 18 to 35 years. The information was collected through direct personal interview method using a pre-designed questionnaire comprising 40 items that the respondents had to fill in (electronically or on paper). Results. The data obtained suggest that elder abuse should not be seen as a monolithic phenomenon. Instead, it should be seen as a multifaceted phenomenon which takes place in many forms. Thus, social workers dealing with elder abuse issues should learn to unpack the phenomenon of elder abuse. Also the results suggest one cannot think of elder people as a homogeneous group of people. Instead, they should always be assessed as a heterogeneous group of people, and relevant and adequate understanding and/or intervening in any elder abuse situation should involve careful and critical examination of the particular elder person who has suffered particular type (s) of abuse by in-depth exploring the various characteristics of the respective elder persons. Conclusions. The results of the study support the idea that approaching any elder abuse situation with already pre-packed explanations or interventions cannot work. Perceived from these perspectives, it suggests that elder abuse explanations or interventions should be informed by what it called local soils. That is, the real, specific and contextual situations obtaining on the ground at that particular time are the ones that should inform ways of understanding and addressing the particular elder abuse situation.
/ Hannah Arendt Amerikában, emigrációját követően vált a 20. századi politikai filozófia egyik le... more / Hannah Arendt Amerikában, emigrációját követően vált a 20. századi politikai filozófia egyik legismertebb alakjává, ám intellektuális szocializációja az első világháborút követő másfél évtized Németországában, a weimari köztársaság sajátos közegében ment végbe. Filozófiája kétségkívül magán viseli a hitleri hatalomátvételig tartó periódus politikaiszellemi klímájának hatását, befolyásolva gondolkodásának mélyszerkezetét. Ez mindenekelőtt politikai filozófiája modernitásképében érhető tetten, amely-jóllehet az idő múlásával egyre halványabban-magán viseli a weimari korszak kultúrkritikájának sajátos jegyeit. Jelen írás célja annak vizsgálata, hogy Arendt egymást követő alkotói periódusaiban miképpen viszonyul ahhoz a weimari örökséghez, amely kétségkívül intellektuális poggyászának legfőbb tartalmát jelentette, amikor emigránsként Amerikát választotta új hazájának. Vajon igaza van-e Renate Holubnak, 2 amikor úgy véli, hogy Arendt gondolkodói stílusát mindvégig alapvetően meghatározta a hajdani weimari akadémiai mandarin-elit tagjaként elsajátított attitűd? 3 A weimari modernitás Az, hogy a fogalmat többes számban használva, modernitásokról kell beszélni, ma már szakirodalmi közhelynek számít; számos helyi változat van, s a modernitás mint univerzális jelenség ezeknek az összessége. A weimari modernitás egy olyan meghatározott gazdaságitársadalmi-politikai-kulturális modell, amely szorosan kapcsolódik a német történelem egy jól meghatározott periódusához. Talán legfőbb sajátossága a kortárs mentalitást mélyen átható és a kultúrkritikai attitűdöt megalapozó Unbehagen, a modern világgal szembeni ellenérzés. A korabeli kultúrkritikát artikuláló konzervatív forradalom egyik meghatározó reprezentánsának A szerző az MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpontja Filozófiai Intézetének főmunkatársa;
Gábor Kovács: "…for silent amongst rogues, I share their vice"-the road of the interwar Hungarian... more Gábor Kovács: "…for silent amongst rogues, I share their vice"-the road of the interwar Hungarian Jewry to the Shoa from the anti-Jewish legislation to the deportation
Istvan Bibó was the clandestine politological authority during the late Kadar period, and was red... more Istvan Bibó was the clandestine politological authority during the late Kadar period, and was rediscovered after the fall of communism. The essay examines and reconstructs the notions of elite and legitimation in Bibó's political philosophy. As a young thinker he confronted the value crisis between the two world wars. He was influenced by Oswald Spengler's and Ortega y Gasset's theories of elites. The essay analyses the similarities and differences in their views. In Bibó's conceptual world, the theory of elites is connected with the issue of legitimation, because in his opinion the crisis of elites always results in a crisis of legitimation. Bibó's analysis of elites, their social responsibilities as well as the types of legitimization are highly instructive for us since they help us rethink our conceptions of the social roles of elites and political legitimation under conditions of globalisation. KEY WORDS: Istvan Bibó, value crisis, elites, sense of social responsibilities, types of legitimation, humanization of power István Bibó (1911-1979) was one of Central Europe's most profound thinkers in recent history. It is not an easy task to define his field of interest. Was he a historian or a legal scientist, a political thinker, maybe a politician? He was all and none. In his early works, he was interested mostly in legal sciences. Between 1935 and 1944, he wrote a series of essays concerned with jurisprudence. They predicted the direction in which he was to turn after the Second World War. In 1935 he published an essay entitled Coercion, Law and Liberty [Kényszer, jog, szabadság]. 2 In this work, the young legal scientist investigated the relation between the three factors listed in the title. In his interpretation, coercion and liberty do not exclude one another. Moreover, they exist in a complementary relationship: coercion cannot eliminate or destroy liberty because someone under very strict pressure or coerced to do something is not deprived totally of a modicum of liberty. However, liberty is an inner
Modernity, in philosophical and sociological literature, has “traditionally” been presented as th... more Modernity, in philosophical and sociological literature, has “traditionally” been presented as the age when artifacts supplant nature and destroy the originally given natural environment. The process of modernization, from this point of view, is the process of de-naturalization. This widely shared conviction has basically been questioned by Hannah Arendt. During the centuries of modern age, in the detriment of the commonly created and uphold human world, process of re-naturalization has been taking place, Arendt argues. This means, from other aspect, that modernity is the age of world-alienation. It is one of the results of modern science that human beings lose their confidence in the reliability of their senses. The Arendtian critique of modernity, which has deeply been influenced by Martin Heidegger's philosophy, takes a difference between the notions of Earth and world. In Arendt's theory technology enhances the processes of re-naturalization. The problem of the relation ...
The phenomenon of anti-urbanism has accompanied the process of modernisation since the emergence ... more The phenomenon of anti-urbanism has accompanied the process of modernisation since the emergence of modernity. The city, the modern metropolis played a vital role in this transition from premodern world to modern era. The metamorphosis of archaic structures, including the fields of economy, society and thinking, are inevitably associated with tensions engendering aversion against the city. Anti-urbanism appeared sporadically everywhere, as a continuous tradition, it emerged at two remote corners of the world: in United States and Germany. Hungarian anti-urbanism of the interwar period had been motivated by the shock of the disintegration of the “Historical Greater Hungary”. The motif of guilty city emerged in the atmosphere of scapegoating: Budapest appeared as incompatible with Hungarian national character. These ruminations about the role of city were embedded in a special context mixing city-philosophy, cultural criticism, German-origin crisis philosophy, political philosophy and...
In The Human Condition (1959), which is mentioned as her opus magnum, Arendt gives a political on... more In The Human Condition (1959), which is mentioned as her opus magnum, Arendt gives a political ontology applying a phenomenological method; she blends the chronological explanation with a conceptual analysis. The axis of thought train is the private-public distinction put in a historical framework. The feminist authors warn us, that this distinction is not a neutral analytical instrument but an abstraction deduced from the reality of the antique patriarchal society. At the same time, Arendt, in other feminist interpretations is a forerunner of feminism who, in her biography written on Rahel Varnhagen, a Jewish woman of Berlin in the first half of the 19 th century, created a role model of modern woman who dared to risk of entering the light of the public realm that had previously been dominated by males and, in her Berlin saloon, offered an alternative space where the women were peers of men. The pro-Arendt feminist interpreters assert, the Arendtian philosophy outlines the possibility for a no male-dominated, really democratic public realm. The political philosophy of Hannah Arendt has been flavored by a history of decline. The beginning of the modernity, in this interpretation, is the moment of derailment. During the centuries of modernity, step by step, the division lines between private and public spheres disappear. Lasting institutions, warranting the public sphere, dissolve in the never-ending procession of material production: everything becomes fluid: culture and politics change into the objects of the everwidening cycles of consumption devouring whole reality and the intimacy, conquering and distorting the emptied public realm, creates proper constellation for totalitarian political practices.
Bibó Istvánt 1956 után kettős érzület vette körül. Az'56 mellett elkötelezettek, majd a demo... more Bibó Istvánt 1956 után kettős érzület vette körül. Az'56 mellett elkötelezettek, majd a demokratikus ellenzék egyfajta" Szent tehén"-ként kezelte, megkérdőjelezhetetlen morális tekintélyként tisztelte [1]. E tekintetben 1979-ben bekövetkezett halála sem okozott változást: Bibó tisztelete töretlen maradt. A morális tekintély, Bibó háttérbe szorítottsága annak is kedvezett, hogy az erkölcsi súly intellektuális erővé is váljék-nézeteit sok esetben kritikamentesen illett kezelni. Természetesen ebben szerepet játszott az is, hogy a szólás ...
The theory of Béla Hamvas on Hungarian national character is one of the less known aspects of his... more The theory of Béla Hamvas on Hungarian national character is one of the less known aspects of his oeuvre concentrating upon the question of self-redemption with the help of ancient esoteric wisdom hidden in the holy books of different world religions. The paper puts the conception of Hamvas concerning national character into the interwar Hungarian and European context giving special emphasis to the German thought. The main hypothesis that national characterology was a reaction to the modernity-crisis of the interwar period that culminated in totalitarianism. Hamvas wasn't an exception to the rule in this respect: his national characterology had been intertwined with his cultural criticism: the core of his theory was the resacralization of soulless, profanized modernity. This is true for the theories of László Németh, János Kodolányi and Sándor Karácsony.
The paper’s aim is a critical reconstruction concerning the ideas of the most renowned representa... more The paper’s aim is a critical reconstruction concerning the ideas of the most renowned representatives of the Hungarian Popular Movement: László Németh, Ferenc Erdei, and István Bibó. It contextualizes the notion of “populism”, which has semantically become overburdened up to now: it means everything and nothing. The Hungarian Populist Movement must be interpreted in the interwar Central-Eastern European and Hungarian contexts. The notion of dual society was a catchword for the abovementioned thinkers; according to its basic tenet, in Hungarian society, there is a symbiosis of modern and premodern segments. The demand for emancipation of the peasantry as a common denominator was frequently connected with the idea of alternative modernization; it was imagined as an autochthonous development different from the Western European models.
O. Spengler was one of the leading protagonists of cultural criticism in the 20th century. His oe... more O. Spengler was one of the leading protagonists of cultural criticism in the 20th century. His oeuvre had been rooted in the German intellectual climate of the pre-war period and war years. The German tradition based on an ambivalent relation to modernity, after the German defeat suffered at the end of the First World War, emerged as the movement of ‘conservative revolution’. This new kind of conservatism, on the one hand, enthusiastically greeted technological advancement, while, on the other hand, rejected social and political modernization. The opposition of the city and the country-side was a central theme of this way of thought. Spengler in his ‘morphology of world history’ gave an outstanding place to this opposition. Our paper offers a reconstruction, in this respect, of the theory of Spengler. Santrauka O. Spengleris buvo vienas iš svarbiausių XX a. kultūros kritikos atstovų. Jo kūryba buvo įšaknyta vokiečių ikikarinio laikotarpio ir karo metų intelektualinėje atmosferoje. V...
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies
The critique of the city is an almost obligatory cliché of the 20thcentury cultural criticism. Th... more The critique of the city is an almost obligatory cliché of the 20thcentury cultural criticism. This paper offers a parallel critical analysis of the conceptions of American ecologist Lewis Mumford and Hungarian historian István Hajnal. They were contemporaries, and their approaches had been inspired by interwar cultural criticism. Mumford did not hate the city: it was, for him, the engine of history, a reservoir of cultural creativeness. The theory of Hajnal, from many aspects, runs parallel with Mumford’s – moreover, the Hungarian historian gives a detailed theory on the types of European city. What connects them is an ecological approach.
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