Anti-metaphysical reasoning and sociological approach

roads from nationalism to regionalism in the 19th–20th century hungarian intellectual tradition

Gabor Gángó

pp. 17-30

in: Tamás Demeter (ed), The sociological tradition of Hungarian philosophy, Studies in East European Thought 60, 2008.

Abstract

Some central issues of fin-de-siècle Hungarian philosophy and intellectual tradition can be retrieved from the writings of József Eötvös and his mid-nineteenth century contemporaries. An ambiguous attitude towards metaphysics, emphasis on sociological issues as well as a regional perspective are apparent in his texts prior to the emergence of the great fin-de-siècle generation of Hungarian intellectuals. They survived the Habsburg Empire thanks to the post-Monarchical literary tradition and Péter Esterházy's works; they provided an adequate vocabulary for the Central European experience following the Soviet Era.