JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES

January-March 2011 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume III., Issue 1.
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ZÓKA, Péter & NAGY, Szilvia : National Spirit and People Soul in the Philosophy of Bernát
Alexander
The Hungarian philosophical history considers Bernát Alexander to be one of the defining figures in
the cultural life of the late 19 th and early 20 th century Hungary.
It is without doubt that most of Alexander’s work is concerned with the notions of “people’s spirit”,
“national spirit”, “national philosophy” and “Hungarian philosophy”, since on the two turning points of
his career, he thematized them by themselves.
“If a national spirit is outstanding in something, then it is universal in that notion as well.” – states
Alexander considering the relationship of different national spirits with each other. The contact between a
given national spirit and other similar entities is not harmful at all; on the contrary, it is highly desirable.
The different national spirits indeed get new impulses on the contact with other cultures, and only this
positive competition and discourse can secure the survival and development of the different national
spirits.
This leads us to deduct a conclusion concerning an important social issue of today: the problem of
preserving cultural diversity.
The basic, even “existential” interest of a majority society is to help the cultural development of the
minorities it comes in contact with, with every available instrument, because each of them needs the
discourse and the positive “competition”, which happens inevitably during the meeting of different
cultures. Every society needs this incentive, fertilizing effect since that is the only way to provide middle-
and long-term progress for both minority and majority societies. The society which closes itself away from
such discourse forces both its own and its disclosed minority culture for stagnation and slow death. The
more minorities the majority society keeps itself aloof from, the stronger the above mentioned effect will
become, and thus on the long term forces those who shelter themselves to become a distant historical
memory.
Thus, the preservation of cultural diversity gets into a new light of research.
We think that this argument is far stronger than the one set by John Locke in his work titled “A Letter
Concerning Toleration” written in the name of tolerance, which is considered to be the foundation of this
argument ever since its birth.
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