Szempontok Kolnai Aurél politikai gondolkodásának rekonstrukciójához
Suggestions for a Possible Reconstruction of Aurel Kolnai’s Political Thinking

Summary/Abstract: This is an introductory article into the thought of Aurel Kolnai. He was an outstanding moral and political philosopher with a wide range of interest, speaking and writing in five languages fluently. His academic career began quite late, which is the main reason for the relative, but decreasing, neglect of his thinking. Another reason for this is that despite the remarkable integrity of his thinking, he never developed a proper „theory” of politics. This was due to the fact his political philosophy grew out of first hand experiences with, and reflections on, politics, and it was influenced by the unsystematic method of early phenomenology. His ideas have thus to be reconstructed, resisting the temptation of building a system out of them. This explains the rather uninformative notion of „suggestions” in the title of this article. In attempting to reconstruct his political philosophy, I therefore draw heavily on his formative political experiences, as well as on his philosophical and spiritual methodology. By reflecting on them, four basic thematic emphases suggest themselves. The first is the problem of relating the moral and political realms of value: in what way are they different and mutually dependent. The second is the criticism of utopian thinking, not on the basis of the impracticality of utopias, but on the basis of their unthinkability. The third is the criticism of totalitarianism, in which Kolnai devotes a special attention to the hegemony of the Common Man and totalitarian effects of progressive democracy. The fourth is a special, antielitist, yet not unreservedly democratic, version of conservatism, underlying his thought. These emphases are recurrent in the political philosophy of this highly original and profound author.

• Details
• Contents