Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

The Nationality of Reasoning:Autochthonist Understandingsof Philosophy in Interwar RomaniaMIHÁLY SZILÁGYI-GÁLIntroductionMy paper seeks to reconstruct certain arguments that asserteda direct relationship between philosophy and the cultural identityof the philosopher, originating in the interwar Romanian context.Furthermore, my intention is to demonstrate the conceptual implicationsof this relationship for a model of collective self-definition and anunderstanding of the nature of philosophy. My analysis seeks to exemplifyan assumption according to which philosophical reasoning is a culturally-biasedmental enterprise. Such a conception not only claims thatphilosophical reasoning might be culturally biased, but also formulatesnormative and ontological statements. According to this normative perspective,the relationship between reasoning and the identity of thephilosopher is not accidental, but exists by necessity, while the ontologicalperspective asserts that this relationship is not only desirable, but itis the only possible one.The historical significance of the selected arguments resides in thefact that they were part of an intellectual elite’s attempt to organize variouslocal and regional identities into the framework of a modern nation.In the given historical context, these philosophical arguments may be perceivedas an attempt to establish a cultural consensus by constructinga sense of national “togetherness.” As the following sections demonstrate,such a sense of togetherness was intended to underpin the creation ofa homogenized state, based upon ethnic and religious categories.The Historical BackgroundThis section offers a brief historical overview of some European models of“organizing the masses into a people,” and discusses the relationshipbetween fascism and conservatism, crucial ideological models for theRomanian attempts at defining the “national essence” in the interwar81