Karoly Veress
| Key
words: minority condition, Transylvania, Makkai, European humanity, minority , values |
Assoc.
Prof. Ph.D. |
The Interpretive Possibilities of the Paradox of the Minority Condition
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Abstract: The author of this paper presents the main interpretative orientations regarding the concept on the minority being of the reformed Transylvanian bishop Makkai Sándor who lived in the inter-war period. The author tries to point out the philosophical, moral, and existential sides of this problem which has become deep-rooted and permanent in the consciousness of the Hungarian intellectuals from Transylvania, and which has been known as the problem of the minority existential paradox. To accomplish this, the author relies on the theoretical and methodological possibilities provided by the philosophical hermeneutics. Sándor Makkai, former Transylvanian Protestant bishop and professor at the University of Debrecen published his writing entitled It is imposskble in the Láthatár review in 19371."In it he revealed the basic inner paradox of the minority existence. The author's main idea integrated in the mentality as the paradox of minority existence2 since the question of minority" cannot have a solution worthy of the human being because the minority category itself is unworthy of the human being, it is spiritually impossible. The analysis highlighting the paradoxical nature of the minority condition was strongly debated among the JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 72 Hungarian intellectuals of the epoch and in the press. The debate found its echo in Hungary as well, among the representatives of the intellectual groups close to Makkai.3 From what kinds of analyzing perspectives can this issue be approached, what are the emerging and explorable points of view, what are the possibilities of misunderstanding and analysis traps of analysis? Throughout my study, these are among the questions that I am interested in, while I attempt an interpretive exposition of the matter of the paradox of minority condition and its approaches in the It is impossible-debate. According to my hypothesis, in the notional content of the minority condition paradox, different levels of meaning meet and are interwoven. The issue has philosophical, ethical and existential side. The participants in the It is impossible debate discuss these aspects, explaining them in more or less detail, but not with such a systematic and methodological approach that their role in the understanding of the minority issue becomes clearly comprehensible. The debate hides just as much as it reveals these possible levels of interpretation in their differentiated nature. In my study I will expound the meaning of the minority condition paradox on different interpretive levels, in the context of the philosophical, ethical and existential interpretations. My analysis does not take into account all years, connections and final conclusions but it rather aims at asserting a new approach and highlighting a hypothetical raising of a problem, in which it tries to reveal the deep, substantial philosophicality of the It is impossible-issue. My chosen method is basically interpretive and during its realization I try and apply the hermeneutical perspective4. 1. The Problem: the Paradox of the Minority Condition 1.1. Why paradox? At first, the concept of paradox seems understandable, but in fact it has several possible meanings. Solomon Marcus, the famous mathematician, in his book about paradoxes, states at the very beginning that the common characteristic of paradoxes is the challenge of good sense. Paradoxes create a peculiar, unbelievable and absurd situation logically or linguistically, they have a shocking effect on recipients. This is the basic meaning of the original Greek word, too: objection, contrary opinion to a general belief5. What is shocking in the paradoxes is the nature of the truth itself. It seems that the paradox opposes the generally accepted truth but is not less true. In other words, in the paradoxes the two faces of one and the same truth are reflected6. The curious analytical mind distinguishes between the two faces of the paradox, views them as contradictory JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 73 thoughts, and expresses them in statements. From this is derived the insolvability of the paradox for the mind. One of the faces of the truth cannot be definitively tricked against the other. But a change in perspective can solve all paradoxes. In his article entitled It is Impossible, according to his original wish, Makkai wants to draw attention to the inner contradiction of the minority category and the nature of the paradox. But the paradox present in the minority category points to the paradoxical nature of the minority condition. The main impetus and inner motivation lies exactly in this: the minority conscience, under the shocking influence of the paradox within the category, is confronted with the nature of the condition paradox. As a result of the pressuring force of the paradox, the minority intellectual conscience cannot avoid facing the real nature of minority existence. And this reacts adjustingly upon it. 1.2. The paradoxical nature of the minority category What
does the paradox nature of the minority category consist in? The answer
follows from the true nature of the category itself. The original meaning
of the term category is accusation, indictment, judgment, sentence.
According to the original function of the category, it is the instrument
of human sense that serves the aim of the sense judging over the diversity
and scattering of experiences with its help and thus making it Within the minority category the very functionality of the category prevails. It is a mental formation through which the mind makes a unifying and generalizing judgment over a certain group of people: minority. And it is exactly in it that Makkai sees the paradoxical nature of the minority category. The minority category grabs a knot of human existence. In this phase, human existence, as in all of its important phases, appears according to its real nature for the mind: as a set quality of existence, namely as its superior quality that is the carrier of the completeness and genuineness of existence. In the case of minorities as well, human existence is human in quality according to its true nature, that is to say, it can be an advanced existence on the horizon of completeness and genuineness. Contrary to this, the minority category with the minority label makes a quantitative judgment over this knot of human existence in the negative sense, opposing it as fewness to the claim of existential completeness. Makkai also emphasizes that this fewness is understood not only as less in number but also from the perspective of values. Minority means not only quantitatively less, but also, in the spiritual sense, of lesser value.8 By this judgment, the minority category excludes the concerned group of people from its human condition and completeness of human life. Its JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 74
quantitative perspective is opposed to human quality and enforces its
opposition violently and degradingly against it. This is a challenge towards
human dignity that means setting human life in/on the horizon of completeness
of existence. The concept of human dignity is set in the center of the
European human image by Kantian philosophy. It is closely connected to
autonomous, free human existence which constitutes an end in itself that
is autonomously capable of freeing itself according to its own inner rules.9
This way of existence has "an inner value, that is to say
dignity"10. Living a life worthy of a human being
is the modern European's personal perspective, or rather, according to
the human image of European culture, it means nothing else but living
in the horizon of existential completeness. Dignity is actually a pursuit,
in the Kantian sense, it is the intelligent, free being's pursuit of a
humanly complete and genuine life. It comprises both the behavior
towards deserving the good and the hope of getting a share the
good.11 The minority category deprives the life of a
group of people of this dimension, thus it deprives their human existence
of its human essence, human quality and human sense: from the pursuit
of dignity, from the horizon opening on human completeness and genuineness.
This is why it poses the problem: the minority category is not a real
category. In the real category, the true nature of human existence should
emerge for the mind. But, on the contrary, in the minority category the
true nature of human existence is hidden, and an attribute shows up in
its place that not only contradicts the real essence of human existence
but also effectively reacts against it in the practical actions that are
based on it. The real human existence processes included under the minority
category drift in the direction of reduction and impossibility and not
towards the completeness of human condition.
So, for Makkai, the paradox included in
the minority category in its final form reveals itself in the recognition
that the minority category is not a real category. It is a kind of category
that contradicts its content and functionality, the real content and functionality
of real categories as intellectual instruments. It acts in exact contradiction
in the relationship between mind and existence, in opposition with requirements
of the original practicality: instead of taking mental order into the
experience of existence, it acts with the purpose of destroying order;
instead of acting as an instrument of rationalization, it creates an irrational
condition. In the final resort, the minority category contradicts the
original categorizing aim of sense itself, the meaning of categories:
a category opposed to sense. This is why Makkai, as a further step, brings
up the issue that such a category does not derive from the natural categorizing
propensity of sense rather is a artificially created category.
Those who created it did not take into consideration the real needs of
human sense, but according to certain particular interests opposing human
sense they created a project that does not fit in the intellectual order
of the human world in a natural way. It does not act in the direction
of the rationalization of human existence but towards the creation of
irrational conditions.
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 75
The minority category was created by political powers as an element of
an order-restoring process. But a category produced in such an artificial
way creates human situations and relationships opposed to the substance
of humanity, so instead of rationalizing human existence, it fosters its
irrationalization. Thus, through the minority category, the original political
intention is turned upside down, since the political perspective and action
carried by it acts in the direction of discontinuing humanity instead
of favoring humanity. Through the minority category, the particular political
interest and action that should find its true meaning in the universal
horizon of humanity is transformed into an attempt committed against humanity.
So, in the minority category, the political sphere gets into an indissoluble
contradiction with the basic human existential interests expressed in
universal humanity; the action serving human purposes and interests becomes
anti-human. In the last resort, this is where the paradox carried by the
minority category is revealed. 1.3. The
paradoxical nature of the minority condition
How does the category-paradox turn into
the paradox of the minority condition (or rather destiny paradox) in the
analyses of the article by Makkai entitled It is Impossible? This
process can be immediately traced in the first reflection on the It
is Impossible article in the writing by Nándor Hegedüs.
This is where the "notional confusion" emerges for the first
time, identified by Makkai in Nation and Minority, according to which
the interpreters identify the minority category with the minority condition/destiny.
But this "confusion" - in a Hegedüs drafted three formulations
of the condition paradox that represent three levels of meaning, three
steps in the direction of understanding the paradoxical nature of the
minority condition.
a) The first formulation: One cannot
live in a minority condition, but one must (has to)12. That
is to say, the person living in a minority condition faces the contradiction
of possibility and necessity (obligation). For him, life at its natural
and objective level, as human life, is impossible, but it is still his
life that is part of him not by individual choice but external circumstances.
This external obligation for him as human being, that is to say moral
being, becomes inner obligation, duty, existential commandment: it is
compulsory to live an impossible life! On the one hand the contradiction
lies between the external fact of life and the inner human impossibility,
on the other hand there is the contradiction between the impossibility
of possibilities and the obligation, compulsion of circumstances. In this
case destiny is the external frame of human life which creates this contradiction
within human existence.
b)The second formulation: The minority
condition is impossible; if it is still possible, then how is it possible?13
Namely, the minority condition is theoretically impossible, as it is not
a human destiny, but still the minority condition holds since there are
people living in
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 76 minority
condition. The minority condition as theoretical impossibility can be
opposed to reality and eliminated from it, but as real frame of human
existence it is part of reality, not only as circumstance also as real
possibility that acts on it with pressuring force: it is possible that
certain people live in minority condition. Thus, in the minority condition,
theory and practice, logical expectation and real human condition are
again in a contradiction that seems indissoluble.
c) And finally, the third formulation:
the minority community (and within it the individual) is continuously
facing an „either… or" type of choice: either it should
not be a minority, or if it is, then it is not a human community and its
individuals are not the accomplishers of real human existence14.
The choice is not between real possibilities, rather between mutually
exclusive ones: if he wants to exist in a human manner, then he should
give up his minority condition, that is to say his human community; and
if he sticks to the minority community, the he should give up the possibilities
of real human existence. The individuals in question experience such choice
situations as a moral and existential paradox; one should choose but it
is impossible; at least it is impossible in such a way that the existential
interest prevails and man stays a moral being. In such circumstances they
experience the trauma of "no solution." In these "either…
or" situations, the paradoxical nature of the minority condition
really shows: necessity, that is to say the unsolvable contradiction
between fateful obligation and possibility. For the one who chooses
to maintain his minority condition the natural order of necessity and
possibility is reversed: in the choice between necessity and possibility,
the obligation excluding possibility counts as the dimension of existence,
the heroic choice of which is the command of absolute duty for the one
who lives and experiences the minority condition; and the possibility
that removes compulsion emerges as an anti-human dimension, the freedom
of the escape from obligation.
2. The Main Interpretive Directions
of the Minority Condition Paradox 2.1. The minority condition paradox as philosophical issue On the basis of the It is Impossible discussion, the paradoxical nature of the minority condition, the paradox of the minority condition or the destiny paradox can be approached and explained on each of the above-mentioned fundamental levels of meaning, namely, as a philosophical, moral, and existential problem in the same time. Even though Makkai's text hints several times at the "theoretical" and "fundamental" impossibility, namely at the fact that the he does not tackle the problem on a personal, ethical or political level but on a philosophical one, the majority of contemporary and later interpreters remained mostly indifferent regarding to this. They JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 77
have never really dealt with the precisely philosophical issue
in the "it is impossible."
On a philosophical level, the essence
of the minority condition paradox can be pinned down at the point of intersection
between two opposite philosophical trends, the neo-Kantian philosophy
of values and culture and the Heideggerian-Jaspersian existentialist philosophy
characteristic of the spiritual life of the first half of the 20th century,
which forms Makkai's philosophical background and interest. The intellectual
atmosphere of the beginning of the century, and the formation of the intelligentia
conscience in the Central European cultural environment, including the
Transylvanian Hungarian environment, were mainly influenced by neo-Kantianism.
According to the neo-Kantian intellectual
conscience, reality and the world of facts are given as the result of
an external event, as a kind of compulsion, fate, fatefulness that cannot
be changed but from which one can step out into an ideal world, an inner
happening that goes on in the world of values and culture in which one
can build a world that will develop human completeness in the spiritual
and intellectual sense.15
But according to existentialist philosophy,
the philosophical obligation is to understand existence from the existing,
and this understanding makes the presence of being transparent as well
as the one questioning life in its existence. This is why this way of
understanding of the existence is the existential determinant of the presence
itself, as human existence. Here existence itself is questioned, the existence
of presence So, from the perspective of existentialist
philosophy, for the human being the real world is nothing else but his
conception and inner happening. External constraint cannot be removed
from it, as the empire of the destiny imposed on him, and there is no
way towards the sort of transcendence where the existential lacks of here
can be supplied by values that would be born there. This is where the
disenchanting influence of the Heideggerian existential philosophy prevails
the most for the minority thinker: it makes him see that there is no other
real world for men but his own existence and this is nothing else but
the materialization of his own possibilities that came into being. Authentic
existence means the existential completeness developed in this existence;
so the human being can and must develop his completeness in this present
condition. From this point of view, the realization of the transcendent
dimension of values is sheer illusion beyond this existence or without
a solid foundation in it.
The possibility of the paradox is hidden
in the contradiction that lies between two kinds of philosophical dispositions
in the minority intellectual conscience: the one leading the existential
possibilities from the practical,
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 78
fateful, real circumstances into the world of values and culture and the
other seeing the possibilities of being in the real existence itself as
the only possible developing arena. The deep category feature of this
contradiction appears in the fact that the intellectual conscience embracing
the neo-Kantian and cultural philosophy approach and the minority ideologies
forming in them view minority existence as fate and they focus on what
follows from these facts from the perspective of human attitude; in opposition
with it the concept-reflection of existential philosophy considers the
minority condition as existence.
The paradox lies in the philosophical
consideration that what is „possible (because it is has to be)"
from the point of view of value and cultural philosophy, is „impossible"
from the perspective of existential philosophy. Why is it impossible?
According to Makkai's answer, it is impossible because the
minority existence category is the impossibility turned into a factum;
it's inner happening is not the possibility that becomes existence but
the process toward impossibility and inexistence. The minority existence
is not merely an unauthentic existence, a not fully complete existence,
but is also the radical denial of an authentic existence, something that
does not have any kind of natural existentiality, towards which there
is no naturally practicable way from another condition or existential
happening. The minority condition category is not a real category in itself
as it is not something that philosophical thinking would naturally notice
in the existent. It is not something that could lead our thoughts concerning
human existence in a well-defined direction on which the deep, important
components of human existence could get to the surface. On the contrary,
the minority category reveals to us the human existence deprived of its
fundamental human content, thus not wholly human, but rather inhuman and
anti-human. In an existential philosophical sense, the minority category
is a philosophical impossibility. 2.2. The minority condition paradox as an ethical and existential issue In „It is Impossible" Makkai does not treat the minority condition empirically or from the perspective of every day life, rather, he treats it speculatively. How the minority condition is or is not practically bearable for those living it depends on the success of the political, economic, social, and cultural solvability or insolvability of the minority problem. But theoretically the fact is that the minority condition as the ontical medium of human existence is fundamentally „unbearable in its deepest root," because it „totally contradicts human dignity," as a condition in which the human content of existence - humanity - becomes narrow and shrinks instead of blossoming17. In other words, the minority condition is not a true, genuine human type of existence. The concrete state does not change the fact that there are minorities on the empirical level of every-day existence, people living in a minority condition who for their personal JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 79
or community interest face the problems that follow from this condition
each day.
The speculative facing of the essence
of the problem and its rational analysis have their importance both from
an existential and ethical perspective. The two can hardly be separated,
not even through the analyzing-interpretive approach.
From an existential point of view it is
not the same how, at the level of his conscience, the person living in
a minority can face the fundamentals of his existence and can be able
to grab it at the roots. Facing the existential problems does not merely
mean spiritually reacting to practical life but it is its integrant part.
The person living in a minority develops different life strategies, faces
his existential problems differently depending on whether he fosters illusions
or dramatizes his condition or he weights his possibilities, capacities
and instruments. Furthermore, soundly facing life situations is not only
a practical requirement for the modern man but a moral one as well, the
moral requirement of asserting the value-creating humanity that could
be developed in himself and in those close to him. Thus the wish is expressed
according to which the modern man should live his life not as the mere
shaper of his fate but as a being with duties and obligations towards
it. In this sense, living in the prison of illusions or the practical
effectiveness and the lucid reckoning of the conditions of creating values
is also the index of the personal and community lifestyle's morality.
The moral problem of the minority
condition occurs exactly in this aspect. The person living within a minority
could overpass the problems of minority emerging from the fundamental
nature of his fate if he lived his life as a responsible person according
to a rational life strategy. The true sense of his morality should manifest
itself in this instead of the heroic acceptance of his fate marked by
illusions. And what is more, he should find in it the way of balancing
the minority disadvantage with moral surplus. On the contrary, the basic
nature of the minority condition itself, revealed at the level of speculative
conception, limits the human being and the community to practice the responsibility
towards a rational lifestyle and his own existence. This fact is not a
conclusion following from the conception but it only manifests itself
in it. In reality it is a kind of universal factum brutum hidden
in particular phenomena, that is valid both independently from the conception
and in its absence exactly like the factum according to which minorities
and people living in a minority really exist in spite of the undignified
nature of the minority condition speculatively understood. But the acceptance
or rejection of the nature of the minority condition is an important part
of the reality in the life of a minority and it shapes it. This is where
the other face of the paradox emerges: accepting and understanding, even
speculatively, the real nature of his fate by the person living in a minority
is a rational act that sets a boundary to the limiting character of this
condition that is the foundation of the attitude worthy of a human being
in opposition with this situation.
The moral problem following from the understanding
of the fundamental nature of the minority condition
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 80
has another facet, too, which leads us to the problem of „Europe's
consciousness." What does Makkai hint to while saying this? Conscience,
just like the mind relating to norm (normative mind, intelligence), is
a moral category. According to the human conception of modernity, the
action most appropriate to human aims and interests is the action that
reveals humanity in the most complete way. It requires at one and the
same time both practical effectiveness and solid moral grounds. At the
same time, it has to be suitable for the rationally set aims from the
perspective of instruments and means and adjust to the moral norms that
are rationally acceptable. Conscience is its driving force, being on the
one hand the rational understanding of the norm and the necessity of an
adequate action, and on the other, lacking external authority constraint,
an inner pressuring feeling. The moral being can be recognized mostly
because in critical life situations the voice of conscience begins to
speak within him, re-orienting the mind back to adjust to the norms in
the best interest of the rational effectiveness in the following of aims.18
Succinctly stated, it sets the moral limits of the aim of rational
effectiveness.
This moral delimitation is valid for political
actions as well, if it is not an end in itself but relates to humans,
that is to say it reveals itself as an action serving the human aims and
interests. Speculatively revealing the fundamentals of the minority condition
casts a light on the moral side of the action of the political factors
that basically cause the minority situation, on the ethical responsibilities
that go hand in hand with the political steps and solutions. From this
point of view the political decision of the European powers can be considered
an immoral action since it plunged human groups in the minority condition
on the basis of the peace treatises. Their decision is immoral even if
they acted unconsciously, merely led by pragmatic considerations, that
is to say without having thought over the fundamental nature of the minority
condition on a theoretical, speculative level. Such a decision that enforces
unilaterally pragmatic rationality is immoral because while it has in
mind immediate efficiency, it lacks the relation to the norm of the rational
considerations. The immorality of such a decision is neither relieved
by the fact that they plunged certain groups of people into a minority
situation while they discontinued the minority condition for others. But
the decision of the political powers proves to be immoral viewed from
the other side, too. If they made the decision rationally accepting and
understanding the true nature of the minority condition, that is to say
even if they understood the undignified nature of the minority condition,
they still decided to practically create and preserve such conditions,
their action is characterized by the deepest cynicism. In this case, they
set against each other two closely linked sides of rationality that serve
humanity only as a whole, not separately. The normative mind, lacking
practical efficiency in its idealism, only fosters moral illusions; the
practical mind lacking its connection to the norm in its pragmatism merely
pursues immediate efficiency.
The European powers, if they plunged groups
of people into the minority state either from pragmatic
JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 81
considerations or cynicism did not take into account the word of their
conscience. The spiritual element is lacking in their decision, which,
for the modern European harmonizes the pure rationality of actions with
the moral requirement of a guarentee that the rational act serves humanity.
When Makkai appeals to the (missing) conscience
of the European powers, he directs attention to the complete failure of
the European way of lifeand furthermore, to the failure of the European
modernity. Rationality and morality is dual and inseparable, since European
modernity, which is based on them, bumps up against its own limits because
in creating a kind of practice in which these fundamental conceptions
can be pitted against each other. In the inseparable contradiction of
the minority and nation existence, the minority condition paradox becomes
the universal paradox of European modernity, the inseparable paradox of
theory and practice, idealism and realism, morality and rationality, culture
and politics.
The first phrase of Makkai's text becomes
really understandable through this approach, according to which European
humanity wrote „its own death sentence" in the peace treatise
following the world war19. Through the peace treatise, European
humanity turned against the pure base of the European way of existence,
humanity, causing a condition that contradicts it and thus becoming in
opposition with its own ideals and possibilities.
Thus it is seen that the minority condition
paradox carries the most complete and essential criticism of European
modernity.
Notes:
* Translated from Hungarian by Szasz Maria-Augusta.
1 See Sándor Makkai, Nem lehet
(It is impossible) in Nem lehet. A kisebbségi sors vitája
(It is Impossible. The Debate of the Minority Destiny), (Héttorony
Könykiadó, 1989)
2 In his article Makkai gives the following
definitions to the issue of impossibility: "…I have to
say that that I cannot imagine minority life worthy of a human being at
all, because I consider the minority »category« unworthy of
man and spiritually impossible." (Makkai 1989. 107-108.)
In the Europe refound again in its national
consciousness, minoritary life became impossible and untenable both theoretically
and substantially." (Makkai 1989. 108.)
„So, regardless whether the minority
condition can be postponed from a political, economic, social or
cultural perspective or not, beyond all this it is unbearable in its deepest
roots as it is strongly opposed to human dignity and this is what Europe's
conscience, if it has any, should not tolerate and support." (Makkai
1989. 109)
„The minoritary condition is not
political impossibility or it is not mainly that but it is also ethical
impossiblity." (Makkai 1989. 111.)
3 The materials of the debate were gathered
and systematized by Peter Cseke and Gusztav Molnar at the end of the 80s.
They published it at the Hettorony publishing house with the title Nem
lehet. A kisebbsegi sors vitaja (It is Impossible. The Debate of the
Minority Destiny). Thanks to their work the materials of the debate became
available in a clear form for further analyses and scientific research.
The editors themselves contributed to it with an introductory and closing
essay.
JSRI
• No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 82
4 Here I understand the interpretive method in the spirit of the
Gadamerian and Ricœurian conception. Interpretation is the journey
to meaning that opens up in understanding; it is participation in the
process of realization of sense. "Interpretation is not such an act,
writes Gadamer, that is added to understanding at the end and incidentally
but understanding always means interpretation, thus, interpretation is
the explicit form of understanding." (Gadamer 1984. 218.) "…Interpreting
means, writes Ricœur, that one chooses the conceptional way opened
by the text and go where the text went." (Ricœur 1999.
30.) Interpretation is participation in the building of meaning; in this
process the interpreter structures not only the meaning but also himself
as interpreter. In the hermeneutical reflection "the I and
the meaning are of the same kind" (Ricœur 1999. 26).
5 (see Marcus 1984. 9)
6 The specialist researching on paradoxes
demonstrates that in fact all definitions merged into the following three:
1) The paradox is a contradiction-like statement hat is actually true;
2) The paradox is a statement that seems true but in fact it contains
a contradiction; 3) The paradox is a valid argumentation that leads to
a contradictory conclusion (Falletta 1988.11).
7 István V. Király explains
this idea applying it to Aristotle's use of categories (he was the first
to provide philosophical importance to categories): The term category
"does not have another philosophical sense at Aristotle either but
to render those fundamental perspectives on the basis of which a certain
fact stands on the illuminated arena of judgment, so that its own whole
truthfulness were decided." (Király 1999.32)
8 The detailed explanation is also given
by Makkai in the Nemzet es kisebbseg (Nation and Minority): see
Makkai 1939. 16-17.
9 The ideal of the intelligent being's
dignity is based on the fact that he "only obeys to the law that
at the same time he gives to himself" (Kant 1991a. 68).
10 (Kant 1991a. 68)
11 " So that good became complete,
writes Kant in Critique of Pure Mind , it is necessary that those
who deserved happiness through his behavior, could hope for receiving
it, too" (Kant 1995. 610).
12 see Hegedüs 1989. 112
13 see Hegedüs 1989. 112
14 see Hegedüs 1989. 115
15 According to this conception, culture,
says Rickert belonging to the school of Baden, "is nothing else but
the entirety of those things that either have been directly created by
the man acting according to values or if they already exist, he intentionally
cherishes them for the sake of the values attached to them. In each process
of culture, a certain value acknowledged by man is embodied" (Rickert
1923. 22).
16 "although, says Heidegger, the
existence of presence is ontically not only close or the closest but also
the presence existence is we ourselves. As opposed to this, or
maybe exactly due to it, it is the farthest. It is true that understanding
this existence is part of the most particular existence and that he dwells
in a certain sense of his existence (Heidegger 1989. 105)
17 Makkai 1989. 109
18 Conscience is one of the central categories
of the kantian-neo-kantian philosophy. According to Kant's definition:
"Conscience is the inner court of the mind (in front of which
his thoughts judge or dismiss each other). (Kant 1991b. 554)
19 Makkai 1989.106 Bibliography: FALLETTA, Olas. Le livre des paradoxes (The Book of Paradoxes), (Paris: Pierre Belford, 1988) HEGEDUS Nador. Notes in Nem lehet. A kisebbsegi sors vitaja (It is Impossible. The Debate of the Minority Condition). Selected by Peter Cseke and Gusztav Molnar. (Budapest: Hettorony kiado, Limes-konyvek, 1989). JSRI • No.3 /Winter 2002 p. 83
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Let es ido (Being and Time). (Budapest: Gondolat,
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