Lucian Blaga: Selected Philosophical Extracts

R. T Allen · Angela Botez · Henrieta Anișoara Șerban

Apr. 2018 · Vernon Press

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 After the Editor's General Introduction, the extracts include central elements of Blaga’s metaphysics, general epistemology, philosophies of science, history, religion, language and especially metaphor, the experience of space and time, art, and finally culture which includes all of them, especially the presence in all of ‘style’ and distinctive ways of practising them. All these extracts are linked by his general epistemology, especially his distinction between two types of knowledge: ‘paradisiac’ or Type 1, which is that of everyday awareness and the current methods, concepts and presuppositions of the sciences of nature and humanity, plus mathematics and philosophy, and accumulates in ‘plus knowledge’ and resolves problems in standard ways; and ‘Luciferican’ or Type 2, which opens up the ‘mysteries’ of new realms of reality which do not fit the current methods, concepts and presuppositions, and so results in ‘minus’ knowledge, the awareness that there are things which at the moment we cannot understand. For these ‘mysteries’ new methods, concepts and presuppositions are required, which ‘abyssal’ categories can supply, ones below those we normally employ and may be aware of. It is part of man’s role in the cosmos to reveal such mysteries. They are also linked by Blaga's awareness of historical changes, especially ‘dogmatic aeons’  in which a prevailing framework of categories, etc., guides knowledge and research, and ones  in which Type 2 knowledge dominates and new frameworks are eventually created. Each extract has its own Introduction which places it in the context of the rest of his interlinked philosophy.

They show how Blaga, with both general themes and concepts and also with particular examples, combines much of the concerns and methods of Analytic and Continental philosophy, and how his historical perspective applied especially to modern times long before anyone spoke of 'postmodernism', and thus as in his lifetime.

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 Professor Angela Botez has recently retired as Head of the Department of Philosophy of Science in the Institute of Philosophy at the Romanian Academy of Sciences in Bucharest, and also as Editor-in-Chief of La Revue Roumaine de Philolosophie. Currently Professor, Senior Researcher and President of the Section of Philosophy, Psychology, Theology and Journalism at the Academy of Romanian Scientists, Bucharest, and Editor-in-Chief of its journal, Annals of the Academy of Romanian Scientists. She has spoken at conferences,  published articles on Blaga in Romanian and English journals, and referred to Blaga in her books.

Dr Henrieta Anișoara Șerban is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations "Ion I. C. Brătianu" of the Romanian Academy, and at the Institute of Philosophy and Psychology "Constantin Rădulescu-Motru" of the Romanian Academy and Correspondent Member of the Academy of Romanian Scientists. She has spoken on Blaga at conferences.

Dr R.T. Allen, now retired, was a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Education, the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. He has published 7 books, edited and co-edited 4 others, and written more than 50 articles for books and academic journals on philosophy in Britain, USA, Canada, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Australia, and China, including 3 papers on Blaga, and referred to him in some of his articles and books.