Aurel Thomas Kolnai (December 5, 1900 – June 28, 1973) was a 20th-century philosopher and political theorist.
Life
Kolnai was born Aurel Stein in
Budapest, Hungary
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population of ...
to Jewish parents but moved to
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
before his twentieth birthday to enter
Vienna University
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public university, public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the Geogra ...
, where he studied under
Heinrich Gomperz Heinrich Gomperz (January 18, 1873 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary – December 27, 1942 in Los Angeles, California) was an Austrian philosopher.
He was a son of Theodor Gomperz. He was a patient of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund ...
,
Moritz Schlick,
Felix Kaufmann
Felix Kaufmann (4 July 1895, Vienna – 23 December 1949, New York) was an Austrian-American philosopher of law.
Biography
Kaufmann studied jurisprudence and philosophy in Vienna. He became part of the legal-philosophical school of Hans Kelsen. F ...
,
Karl Bühler
Karl Ludwig Bühler (27 May 1879 – 24 October 1963) was a German psychologist and linguist. In psychology he is known for his work in gestalt psychology, and he was one of the founders of the Würzburg School of psychology. In linguistics he i ...
, and
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and Sociology, sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberali ...
. It was also at this time that he became attracted to the thinking of
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of F ...
and the
phenomenological thought of Brentano's student
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
. Kolnai studied under Husserl briefly in 1928 in Freiburg. During the early 1920s, Kolnai wrote as an independent scholar with little success. He graduated summa cum laude in 1926, publishing his dissertation on ''Der Ethische Wert und die Wirklichkeit'', which was received favorably in Germany. In 1926, he also converted to
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, largely influenced by
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, ''Time'' observed: "Wh ...
, whom Kolnai viewed as "a brilliant, if unsystematic phenomenologist of common experience." He then began a career of political journalism, writing for ''Der Österreichische Volkswirt'' and ''Die Schöne Zukunft''. Acutely aware of the real threat posed by the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
in Austria, he began writing for ''Der christliche Ständestaat'', a periodical founded to combat Nazism and edited by
Dietrich von Hildebrand. During this time, he also published some of his own philosophical writings including his ''Sexualethik'', ''Der Ekel'', ''Der Inhalt der Politik'', and ''Der Versuch über den Haß''. Kolnai's philosophical writings, though producing little profit for the author, were well received and generated excellent reviews.
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
was impressed by ''Der Ekel''; in a 1932 essay for the journal ''This Quarter'', the painter recommended Kolnai's text strongly to other surrealists, praising its analytical power.
During the 1930s, the encroachment of the Nazi Party in Austria remained a major concern. In 1938, Kolnai published his critique of National Socialism titled ''
The War Against the West
''The War Against the West'' is a critical study of German National Socialism written by Aurel Kolnai and published in 1938. It describes German National Socialism as diametrically opposed to the lassicalliberal, democratic, Constitutional, and ...
''. The Nazi threat compelled Kolnai to leave Austria in 1937, where he was then a citizen, and depart for
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
where he married Elisabeth Gemes in 1940, also a Catholic convert. The
Vichy
Vichy (, ; ; oc, Vichèi, link=no, ) is a city in the Allier Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of central France, in the historic province of Bourbonnais.
It is a Spa town, spa and resort town and in World ...
threat prevented the newly-wed Kolnai from remaining in France, and after a brief stay in England, Kolnai and his wife moved to
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
where he accepted a teaching position at the University of Laval. Frustrated by what he saw as the oppressive parochial Catholicism and the rigid neo-Thomism, Kolnai left Quebec in 1955 and returned to England on a Nuffield Foundation Travel Grant. Though he had quite an extensive list of publications in five different languages, Kolnai had little luck finding a permanent professorship in Britain, and fraught with financial worries, his health began to rapidly decline. Due largely to the influence of Harry Acton, Bernard Williams, and David Wiggins, Kolnai was able to secure a part-time "Visiting Lectureship" at Bedford College at London University. In England at this time, Kolnai became very influenced by the English common-sense philosophy of G.E. Moore and other British intuitionists such as H.A. Prichard, E.F. Carritt, and W.D. Ross. In 1961, he received a one-year research fellowship at Birmingham. In 1968, he accepted a visiting professor position at
Marquette University
Marquette University () is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established by the Society of Jesus as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, it was founded by John Henni, John Martin ...
in
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
which he maintained until 1973 when he died of a heart attack. Kolnai's wife Elisabeth worked on compiling, translating, and publishing his work until her death in 1982.
Philosophical writings and major themes
Kolnai is an eclectic, well-read thinker in the fields of philosophy, economics, and politics. His major philosophical influences were the phenomenological school of Husserl and British analytic philosophy. A major theme in his writings is the effort to recover the givenness of reality and the sovereignty of the object in order to develop a common-sense approach to philosophy. Kolnai drew on the philosophical realism of Thomas Aquinas and believed that Aquinas could provide a valuable contribution to the recovery of broad dialectical objectivism, but he was opposed to the rigidity of 20th century neo-Thomistic orthodoxy and the dogmatic claims of Thomistic ideology. Kolnai's objectivism rests on four claims:
#The importance of ordinary experience to provide access to the real
#The importance of secular experience and common sense in the standards of 'tradition'
#The importance of philosophical teachers and Authorities to 'guide, instruct, and inform'
#The importance of receptivity to the 'multiplicity of objects and modes of cognition' to overcome subjectivity
Kolnai was critical of Martin Heidegger's and Sartre's existentialism, claiming that "they have nothing to offer but doom-consciousness spiced with a high-sounding idealistic demand—or worse: a new version of the aesthete's surrender to active barbarism, an espousal of totalitarian tyranny as the next best substitute for the impossible pursuit of total freedom." Because the world was fallen and tension-ridden, Kolnai thought that Christianity should make its concern the secular world, in order to instill in it practical reason and morality, as expressed in a revealing passage in The War Against the West:
Personally I am inclined to think that in spite of its Christian polish, Luther's pessimism is more pagan than Hegel's pagan optimism, the latter being not entirely foreign to nineteenth-century progressive and constitutionalist views. For black despair is the very core of overweening arrogance. It is true that with Luther this is wrapped in the thread-bare guise of reckless belief in God's grace independent of man's conduct. Hegel, on the other hand, preserves some elements of actual morality.
Another major theme in Kolnai's writings is his anti-utopianism. Daniel Mahoney contextualizes Kolnai's anti-utopianism among such thinkers as Alain Besançon and Václav Havel as well as Solzhenitsyn who viewed utopian thinking as the ideological underpinning of totalitarianism. Kolnai explores what he calls the "utopian mind" phenomenologically, which he links with what he calls the "perfectionist illusion," which is marked by the view that human goods existing in a state of tension can somehow be reconciled. The reconciliation of value and reality, according to Kolnai "suggests the idea of a rupture between the given reality of the world and the counter-reality 'set apart.'" Kolnai thought that the identification of utopianism with a search for justice was misguided, led to the "forced negation of ineliminable tensions." The quest for a utopia was, in its essence, a quest for a world no longer fraught with tension or human alienation—a quest which Kolnai saw as doomed to inevitable failure.
Kolnai's political thought arises from both his phenomenological method and his belief in the importance of philosophy for human life. His emphasis on common sense and his practical point of view frames his political discussions in which he expresses himself as a genuine conservative, praising such concepts as social privilege and hierarchy. However, though Kolnai was sympathetic to what he called "the conservative ethos," he was not a partisan thinker but rather a self-proclaimed centrist opposed to all forms of totalitarianism. Kolnai had an ongoing concern that unrestrained liberalism would inevitably end in totalitarianism, and his critiques of liberalism as he saw it manifest in the United States and Europe center on preventing such consequences. While supporting the cause of the liberal West and affirming pluralism, Kolnai also aptly stated that "to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately."
Kolnai's ethical thought is characterized by strong loves and hates and expressed in terms of values and universal meanings. Broadly, his ethical thought can be described as Christian imperfectionism opposed to the elevation of morality beyond the everyday life. The negative character of moral duties was key for Kolnai, as expressed in his treatise on "Morality and Practice II:"
When we speak of 'respecting' alien property (as also life or rights) we use that word in its weak sense of 'leaving alone,' 'not touching,' 'not interfering with,' much as it is used in French medical language (the rash of typhus fever 'respects' the face, i.e. in the soberer style of English textbooks, the face 'escapes'), not in its strong sense of positive appreciation for something distinctively noble and respectable . . .
Kolnai was strongly influenced by Max Scheler's value ethics, and he thought that if all things were viewed axiologically, assessed first for value, as opposed to the language of 'ought' or 'must,' then one was provided with "a realm of approbative or disapprobative insights . . . without stressing the unbridgeable gulf between
Is and Ought." Thus,
"value ethics precludes the classic pitfalls in Ethics: Hedonism or Eudemonism; Utilitarianism and Consequentialism of any kind, i.e. the interpretation of moral in terms of allegedly more evident primary, natural cognitive experiences; and various kinds of Imperativism: 'duty' cut off from Good and Bad, and its interpretation in terms either of a concrete (social, monarchical, fashionable . . . ) authority, or the 'rational ego,' or of 'Conscience. . . . Axiological ethic directs our attention not only to the plurality of moral values and disvalues, but to the falseness of every monism in regard to the object of moral valuation: be it action, intention, maxim or motive, virtue and vice, character, and all the more of course wisdom or again ontological perfection."[Kolnai, Ethics, Value, and Reality: Selected Papers of Aurel Kolnai. University of London Athlone Press: 1977. Page xx-xxi.]
Kolnai currently remains relatively unknown, but especially in the light of the dialectical return to classical political theory in the writings of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, as well as the recent debates concerning neo-Conservative philosophy, it is likely that Kolnai will receive increasingly more attention in the near future. Kolnai has been praised by influential figures such as
Dietrich von Hildebrand,
H.B. Acton,
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' ...
, and
Pierre Manent
Pierre Manent (; born 6 May 1949, Toulouse) is a French political scientist and academic. He teaches political philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron. Every autumn, he ...
.
References
External links
The War Against the West Chapter V: Faith and Thought The War Against the West, Aurel Kolnai
Privilege and Liberty (PDF)The War Against the West (PDF)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kolnai, Aurel
1900 births
1973 deaths
20th-century Hungarian philosophers
University of Vienna alumni
Catholic philosophers
Hungarian Roman Catholics
Hungarian Jews
Jewish philosophers
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism
Phenomenologists
Université Laval faculty
Hungarian emigrants to the United Kingdom