Bibó István és a politikai filozófia
István Bibó and the Genre of Political Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: Bibó István has often been mentioned as the most prominent representative of Hungarian political thought in the 20th century. But how can the genre of his work be defined? Was it political philosophy? It was not, at least not in the sense of systematic analytical political philosophy. However, in a wider meaning, putting his oeuvre into the context of continental philosophy and of interwar Hungarian thought, Bibó belongs to the essayistic tradition of political thought popular in different European countries, including Great Britain, France and Germany. This genre of essay was especially popular in Hungarian culture after the First World War. It was, in a sense, a substitute for political philosophy. Writers and thinkers like Gábor Halász, László Cs. Szabó, Antal Szerb, and Németh László, whose essays deeply influenced Bibó’s intellectual socialization, cultivated it on very high level. This Hungarian essay genre provided the possibility for dealing with pressing historical, social, and political problems in a form which was accessible for the wider public within a culture in which literature had enjoyed higher prestige than philosophy. Bibó’s political essay grew out of this interwar Hungarian context. He was an outstanding political thinker, but not a professional political philosopher.

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