PERENNIALISM, CULTURE AND MODERN APOCALYPSE: THE PHILOSOPHICAL RECEPTION OF BÉLA HAMVAS
PERENNIALISM, CULTURE AND MODERN APOCALYPSE: THE PHILOSOPHICAL RECEPTION OF BÉLA HAMVAS

Summary/Abstract: Béla Hamvas (1897–1968) was one of the most outstanding Hungarian thinkers of the 20th century, whose enormous (and to this day not fully published) oeuvre represents some of the most important philosophical work ever written in the Hungarian language. In the form of essays, studies and novels, Hamvas demonstrated vast erudition that was truly universal in the best sense of the word. Beyond exponents of modern and premodern philosophy proper, Hamvas worked at the crossroads of comparative religious studies, theology (not just that of Christianity but especially of Hinduism), mythology (Buddhist and other mythologies in addition to Greek and Roman), the history of religion, ethics, psychology, theoretical physics, sociology, social theory, historical science and mathematics. One of the 20th century’s most fascinating thinkers writing in Hungarian, Hamvas is ‘now without a doubt part of the canon’ even if he has not yet gained full admission to the pantheon of Hungarian philosophy. He remains, to quote Péter Balassa, very much ‘outside the guild’ of the discipline, notwithstanding the string of studies and monographs published on his work by the early 2020s. What makes Hamvas truly distinctive as a maverick thinker is the deliberation with which he attempts to defy the science-driven mindset of modernity, which he calls ‘scientism’, combined with his ability to articulate the terms of this intellectual resistance on the most sophisticated level.

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