Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

MÓNIKA BAÁRthe climate theory, one of the most frequently used causal explanations ofthe Aufklärers. Montesquieu’s famous claim was that mankind is influencedby various causes: climate, religion, the maxims of government,precedents, morals and customs. Horváth did not apply Montesquieu’scorrelation between political liberty and climatic environment (colder climatesproduce vigorous, frank and courageous people, whereas warmerclimates induce to sensuality, indolence and servility) for the case of Hungary.In fact, it would have been difficult to accommodate such a theory inCentral Europe, where winters tend to be cold and summers tend to bewarm. However, probably using an analogy of Montesquieu’s argumentthat the high suicide rate in England was due to a climate that continuallyput Englishmen in a state of distemper, Horváth established that climateinfluences national characteristics as well as physical ones, forinstance in the case of language, where the quality of the air affects articulation.Thus, the quality of the air accounts for the abundance of “hissingsounds” in the Slovak language.Horváth fully shared the Aufklärers’ belief in progress, and his optimismwas manifested in many of his articles, which were written on thebasis of the works of the aforementioned German historians. In somecases, he simply translated their work without necessarily identifying hisoriginal sources. In other cases, he interpreted the writings in a Hungarianframework. The article, “The development of democracy in our age”(1841) (in the title of which the word “democracy” was later substitutedby “the interest of the people,” so that it would not provoke the censor)analyzed Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Horváth established thatTocqueville’s main principle, that society was progressing towards equality,was applicable to Hungary as well. Another article, “The origins,development and influence of state theories in modern Europe, afterHeeren” (1842) offered a more sophisticated, relativistic view of democracy.It followed Heeren’s and, generally speaking, the Aufklärers’ interpretationwhich was not only critical of absolute monarchies but also hadreservations regarding the nature of democracy. Some of the Aufklärerswent so far as to present democracy as the counterpart to absolutismsacrificing individual creativity to arbitrary and capricious rule, and leadingto mediocrity. 9 Horváth concluded with a middle-way statement,translating Heeren’s idea word by word:Neither democracy, nor aristocracy, or absolute monarchy are preferable,and the key to political understanding lays in grasping the nature ofthe unique conjunction of spiritual, moral and structural elements thatanimated a specific historical entity at a specific time. … To establisha form of state which includes the guarantees of its own permanence in28