The search for an image of man

Tamás Demeter

pp. 155-167

in: Tamás Demeter (ed), Trends and traditions of intellectual history writing, Studies in East European Thought 62 (2), 2010.

Abstract

The present paper offers a narrative of the post-World War II development of Hungarian philosophy, and argues that it is characterized by a double, historical and anthropological orientation under Marx's influence. The resulting amalgam is an intellectual history that looks beyond the ideas themselves, searching for underlying images of man which are represented as ideological backgrounds to theories of nature, society, cognition, etc. The most important works of this approach interpret ideas and anthropologies within a Marxist framework, and see them as closely linked to the social–historical circumstances in which they develop; yet, these approaches represent an alternative attitude quite different from the official ideology of dialectical materialism.