Constantin Noica Research Articles

The Discourse of Counter-modernization. Constantin Noica’s Reactive National Identity Construction

"Nationalist philosopher Constantin Noica (1909-1987), like many other public intellectuals in Romania, felt that modernization and modern civilization were traumatic to his culture. In this article, I mean to address the discursive templates he used to formulate his version of a traumatized Romanian identity. These templates are structured by master tropes (cf. Kenneth Bur e’s “Appendix” to A Grammar of Motives and Hayden White’s “Introduction” to Metahistory) and are ideologically charged. Relying on suggestions from François Hartog (The Mirror of Herodotus) and from Ruth Wodak et al. (The Discursive Construction of National Identity), I propose alternative master tropes which are generally used in shaping national identities, as well as in dealing with the particular situation of cultures that feel threatened and traumatized by modernization. "

Mihai Drăgănescu: arhitectura modelului său ontologic-informaţional cu şi fără conştiinţă fundamentală

After his demise (in 2010), the philosophical works of Mihai Drăgănescu began to enter the attention of specialists from various backgrounds. His approach's incredible complexity and originality have been viewed and approached from various specific points of view until now. The aim of this paper is to present only a few essential features of the Drăgănescu philosophical approach as a whole, answering the following questions: (a) Is the model he recommended metaphysical, theological, or both? (b) How does the model highlight a certain Logos that becomes primordial in relation to the Being? (c) Why, quite unexpectedly, is the information considered a phenomenon? (d) How does the model he recommends solve some of the problems issued by Husserl and his phenomenology? In a forthcoming paper, we will try to show how Drăgănescu's Ontological-informational model allows a ChaOrdic application („Cha” from Chaos and „Ord” from Order) that characterizes the Reality of today when a natural Chaos appeared under which a new order emerges. Finally, our main conclusion will be that in relation to other similar attempts of recent times, which we know about, the approach of Drăgănescu presents strong originality by integrating the information with the ontological aspect. Furthermore, this confirms what our well-known Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica said a century ago: „Will the novelties of this work make their place in the world?” We should say that we do not doubt if we do not know the inertia that reigns in the world of culture. However, we will say that we do not know about a work that shakes this inertia better than the work of professor Drăgănescu. And if by impossibility it would not impose itself from now on in the culture of the twentieth century, let us be allowed to believe that it will astonish and deeply impress the non-perverted thinkers of the twenty-first century.

Cultural Surveillance in Communist Romania in the 1950s and 1960s. Repression, Re-Education, and Reinsertion. The Case of Constantin Noica

The present study aims to analyze the relationship between the so‑called ‘bourgeois’ intellectuals (socialized and educated in prestigious cultural groups in the interwar society) and the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, from three perspectives: repression, re‑education, and social reinsertion. The main argument is that all three phases corresponded to Politburo’s political approaches directly related to the evolution of internal or international political events of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The sources used are the Securitate files of the persons convicted in the ‘Noica–Pillat trial’ from 1960. The research method is qualitative analysis combining an institutional approach of the Securitate files with a case study. Consequently, the article focuses on the case of Constantin Noica, a prominent Romanian intellectual. He was sentenced to prison in 1960, pardoned in 1964, and later used by the regime in power service. The Securitate used Constantin Noica’s friendship with Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade to attract prestigious intellectuals back to Romania and enhance the nationalist orientation of the regime through philosophy.

ATHANASE JOJA – OUTSTANDING PERSONALITY OF THE ROMANIAN CULTURE

"Concerned with philosophy, history and logic alike, Athanase Joja has written a treatise on logic which is the fundamental landmark of the current logic research. The second half of the twentieth century is marked by the appearance of its four volumes of logic. The volumes include a history of logic, problems of systematic logic and logic of science, which reveals his logical vision, but also his philosophical one. He manages to develop a complex theory of the history of logic, capitalizing on the conceptions of classical and modern philosophers, through a proper hierarchy and interpretation, corresponding to an integrative conception. He gives ample space to some complex, vast and difficult-to-match problems. He has been questioning himself constantly and he sought pertinent answers to problems of logic, epistemology and ontology, in order to capture some generally valid truths. The history of ancient thought, Greek philosophy and especially Aristotelian thought were analysed, systematized and discussed in his own manner, a fact which led Constantin Noica to contribute to the publication of two of his History of Ancient Thought volumes. About him, Ion Ianoși stated that through his texts he proves a certain aesthetic sensitivity and receptivity to artistic values. The present study, based on a careful documentation, aims to configure an image as close as possible to the reality of the great thinker Athanase Joja. Particularly critical of his own writings, he provoked a relatively low cognitive interest in his research; this explains the fact that his work is insufficiently known and valued. However, the 21st century has begun with a globally manifest desire to capitalize on and reinterpret the knowledge of the forerunners. In this regard, we note the fact that his life and work were evoked, in 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. In the public life, he played an important role in promoting scientific values and contributed to the establishment of prestigious international scientific publications and events, which would capitalize on the results of Romanian scientific research. We consider that any attention paid to Athanase Joja’s work is an approach that is part of the global cultural trends of the 21st century."

Female Soul and Feminine Spirit: Philosophical Prolegomena to a New (Women) Culture in the Interwar Radio Lectures Alice Voinescu’s and Constantin Noica’s.

Female Soul and Feminine Spirit. Philosophical Prolegomena to a New (Women) Culture in the Interwar Radio Lectures Alice Voinescu’s and Constantin Noica’s. The newly founded Romanian Radio (1927) invited since 1930 the most important personalities of the Romanian culture to speak in the frame of different radio conferences. Two of these personalities were the philosophers Alice Voinescu (1885-1961) and Constantin Noica (1909-1987). Although they represent two different philosophical orientations (Alice Voinescu as a post-metaphysical thinker and Constantin Noica as a philosopher, who tries, like Heidegger in the German culture, to rebuild metaphysics), the two interwar Romanian thinkers meet each other in some philosophical topics. One of these is the critical manner, how they are thinking about the movement of the emancipation of women in the 20thcentury. Both of them agree that the female soul and the feminine spirit have not to lose their specific features in the tendency to become active in the frame of the public sphere. In their critical thinking, Alice Voinescu and Constantin Noica meet the philosophical ideas of German philosophers like Georg Simmel and Martin Heidegger.

Dissenting non-dissenting: ‘resistance through culture’

Putting into question its central presupposition of ‘inner freedom’, this paper deconstructs the ‘resistance through culture’ of the Păltiniş School of dissident thinkers in Romania under communism in the 1970s and 80s. The philosopher Constantin Noica, and his follower Gabriel Liiceanu, argue that resistance to authoritarian repression and dictatorial regimes is best achieved by preserving culture by schooling selected individuals in that culture rather than through direct political action or publicly speaking out. Adducing precisely which cultural values underpin the arguments of these thinkers – values such as purity, exceptionalism, individualism and genius – I show that the culture propounded by them is essentially patriarchal and, further, that this culture is complicit with the very tyranny it seeks to resist: philosophically, ideologically and in practice. This is evidenced by the exclusion of women from the culture espoused. Additionally, by focussing on a fairly recent debate between Liiceanu and Nobel prize-winning author Herta Müller, herself an exile from communist Romania, I delineate two opposing philosophies of language which might best be described as “birth of the word is in the head” versus “birth of the word is on the page”, effectively re-staging a problem going back to early defences of liberty, for example in Spinoza and Mill, the relationship between freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Only by understanding selves as linguistic bodies whose language is socialised and shared through affective relations to others and to oneself do we arm ourselves with the resources to resist censorship, repression and tyranny.

Exile in Reverse: Constantin Noica as an Example of Paraexilic Life in Communist Romania

Exile in Reverse: Constantin Noica as an Example of Paraexilic Life in Communist Romania

Lucian Blaga and Constantin Noica’s beginnings under the sign of elective approaches

Abstract Since he was a high school student in Bucharest, Constantin Noica was fascinated by Lucian Blaga’s philosophical, poetical, and dramaturgical evolution. Between the Two World Wars in Romania only few people managed to understand the expressionist vision in Lucian Blaga’s theater. More notable is the precise intuition with which the young Constantin Noica noticed the extraordinary value of Master Manole, which was played both in Romania and in Switzerland. Later on, this was considered to be Lucian Blaga’s most outstanding dramatic play. In the decades to come, Professor and Academician Lucian Blaga kept Constantin Noica in a high esteem.

With Constantin Noica, on Literature and Literary Criticism

With Constantin Noica, on Literature and Literary Criticism

Stawanie się ku bytowi

Brâncuşi’s sculpture “Endless Column” in Târgu Jiu was interpreted by Constantin Noica as an artistic expression of the ontological vision characteristic of the Romanian sense of being. It brings together two great philosophical categories, traditionally seen as mutually exclusive: static being and dynamic becoming. Noica proves that Brâncuşi’s sculpture is unique in the way it illustrates “becoming into being” (Romanian = Devenirea întru fiinţa), the fundamental term in Noica’s ontology.Przełożył Andrzej Zawadzki.

Esej o Rozważności Ziemi Constantina Brâncuşiego

Constantin Noica treated Brâncuşi’s sculpture “The Wisdom of the Earth” (Cuminţenia pământului) in the same way he did “Endless Column”, as an artistic expression of the ontological vision characteristic of the Romanian sense of being. It brings together two great philosophical categories, traditionally seen as mutually exclusive: static being and dynamic becoming. Noica proves that Brâncuşi’s sculpture is unique in the way it illustrates “becoming into being” (Romanian = Devenirea întru fiinţa), the fundamental term in Noica’s ontology.Przełożył Andrzej Zawadzki.

Rzeźbiarz i filozof. Constantin Brâncuşi w interpretacjach Constantina Noiki

The article Sculptor and philosopher deals with the Romanian thinker Constantin Noica’s interpretations of Constantin Brâncuşi’s work. These interpretations are presented with regard to Noica’s philosophical concepts, in particular his reflections on Romanian culture and the sense of being manifested within it. Of fundamental importance in his interpretations is the category of becoming within being – the most important idea developed by Noica and which he applied in many fields of philosophy.

Ontology, History and the Philosophy of National Identity at Constantin Noica

Ontology, History and the Philosophy of National Identity at Constantin Noica

Architecture and philosophy: The interdisciplinarity and coexistence of two worlds in the light of ethereality

At the beginning of the 20th century Marcel Duchamp stated that the art of the future would be growing out of philosophical roots. It seems impossible not to notice this fact in the contemporary world which surrounds mankind. However, the author of this article does not intend to analyse in depth details of manifestos of modernism or postmodernism. The article aims to signal the phenomenon of ethereal in architecture. The analysis of this phenomenon is based on the idea of the so called weak thought which functions in the world of philosophy and which was created by Constantin Noica and Ganni Vattimo. The mechanical transposition of terminology onto the world of architecture seems inadequate. The author of this article would not like to advocate the idea of weak architecture, let alone describe it. Therefore, he introduces the concept of ethereal architecture that contains the idea of inevitable ethereal as an integral part of existence. If someone does not succumb to delusion or wishful attitudes to reality, they will be able to notice the real sense and inner depth of everything that is weak and ethereal and that creates the immanent sphere of the surrounding world.

Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times by Cristina Vatulescu (review)

Cristina Vatulescu, Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times. 247 pp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. ISBN13 978-080460805. $60.00. Communist regimes were obsessed with intellectuals. Enormous resources were mobilized to ensure their obedient regimentation and transformation into state artists. Lenin, who was himself a trained lawyer, held the intelligentsia in deep contempt, while trying to lure and enroll as many scientists and engineers as possible in support of Soviet power. Antonio Gramsci, in turn, described the Leninist vanguard party as a collective intellectual. Cristina Vatulescu's outstanding book focuses on the fate of the unregimented creative intelligentsia in Stalin's Russia and Stalinized Romania, the interplay between artistic creation and police supervision, coercion, and persecution. Drawing from secret police archives in Russia and Romania, this superbly researched and original book captures the tragic destinies of major artists caught at what Lionel Trilling called the bloody crossroads where politics and literature meet. thesis of the book is clearly spelled out: The secret police file emerged and acquired its overwhelming authority precisely at a time when the authority of literary texts was in deep crisis (7). book includes chapters on the nature of secret police files, their contents and their relationship to the two stages of surveillance and investigation; the invisible, often mysterious connections between the work of art, in this case Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, and the author's secret police file; the role of films and filmmakers (such as Dziga Vertov) in turning their professional output into an instrument for societal control of criminality (kino policing); cinematic representations of the Gulag done in collaboration with the secret police and the annexation of art by the voracious police-propaganda complex; and estrangement as an explanatory concept for understanding the relationship between literary theory and the secret police. In fact, as Vatulescu demonstrates, secret police files were the hidden counterpart to real biographies and genuine creations. They were constructed counternarratives inspired by the official demonology. (1) Secret police officers became co-authors of these hidden masterpieces. Isaak Babel', for instance, became a serial foreign agent of sorts, confessed to surreal charges, and was executed without a show trial. His main guilt was imprudent association with Evgeniia Ezhova and her fateful literary salon. (2) Others in the same accursed circle were not arrested, but undoubtedly they were closely watched by a myriad of enthusiastic informers. Stalin's personal literary interests and taste played a major role: this may explain why the cosmopolitan Ilya Ehrenburg (II'ia Erenburg) managed to survive, whereas others less involved with the West perished during the successive waves of terror, including the trial of the Jewish Antifascist Committee. (3) An epigraph from Vladimir Nabokov at the start of the introduction captures in a disturbingly luminous way what the author defines as zones of intersection among literature, film, and secret police in totalitarian environments: The history of Russia ... could be considered from two points of view: first, as the evolution of the police ... and second, as the development of a marvelous culture. Vatulescu develops provocative hypotheses regarding Soviet culture under Stalinism, including the role of the visual arts in constructing legitimizing discourses for the concentration camps. In other words, in some cases, before becoming zeks, some intellectuals were willing to endorse the Gulag through their work. (4) By placing the Romanian experience under scrutiny and exploring the cases of remarkable figures such as Constantin Noica and N. Steinhardt (both major thinkers arrested and jailed, both continuously watched by the Securitate), this book makes a major contribution to the comparative analysis of intellectual survival under communism. …

Limit within image, image within limit

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the state of dependency between the tableau and the image. The proposed ideas go against the normal understanding, usage and function of the image and follow instead a particular ontological understanding of the image. This ontological analysis of the image is irritated by the presupposition that the ontological difference and distinctness of the image is not fixed and secure; on the contrary, it is conditioned by change, as is the case with all beings, being or beingness. This ontological difference exists and is only in its ontic manifestations. Furthermore, the article underlines the fact that the image, as a mode of being, is a plastic being that can be blocked in an ontological and ontic malady. The artistic image is interpreted through an analogy that tries to resist a reifying, objectifying or mechanical relation with an artwork, and one that acknowledges its distinctness, differentness, separateness, and rends, and that accepts the threat of semiotic collapse and its incomprehensible kernel. The intellectual context that is addressed and disrupted at the same time is oriented around the writings on the image of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's (*1940), the existential and clinical term of a ‘divided self’, the subject of research in R. D. Laing's book, The Divided Self, published in 1960, and the thinking of a cultural ontology by the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica's (1909–1987).

The Ontological Pathologies of Constantin Noica

The Philosophical ForumVolume 43, Issue 2 p. 231-238 The Ontological Pathologies of Constantin Noica Andreea Prichea, Andreea Prichea Baruch College, CUNYSearch for more papers by this author Andreea Prichea, Andreea Prichea Baruch College, CUNYSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 May 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9191.2012.00419.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume43, Issue2Summer 2012Pages 231-238 RelatedInformation

Interview with Vasile Dem Zamfirescu

Our interviewee is one of the most prominent personalities of Romanian academic and cultural life. Starting as one of Constantin Noica’s disciples, he begun his carrier as a philosopher, but in time he grew more and more acquainted with psychoanalysis, so that he finally came to embrace it as a full-time profession, not only as a professor, but also as analyst and director of the main psychoanalytical publishing house in Romania . His research activity spreads out on more than 30 years, during which he worked in the research institutes of the Romanian Academy (The Philosophy Institute, The Anthropology Institute) and in several faculties of psychology, philosophy and educational sciences within the University of Bucharest and “Titu Maiorescu” University. As philosopher, psychoanalyst, professor and researcher, Vasile Dem Zamfirescu is a vivid example of professional and academic excellence and also an active model for younger generations, in a cultural area profoundly marked by the inevitable side-effects of about half a century of communism.

Journal 1935-1944: The Fascist Years by Mihail s> Sebastian Patrick Camiller (review)

366 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 Sebastian, Mihail.JournalI935-I944. TheFascistYears. Translatedby Patrick Camiller. R. Dee in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Chicago, 2000. 64I PP.$36.oo. BUCHAREST after the First World War was a city of extraordinary cultural vibrancy. The creation of an enlarged Romania in I9I8 provoked a fervent intellectual debate about the definition of the national character and about the direction which the development of the young nation-state should take. Traditionand modernityformedthe two poles of the debate. At the same time in literature there emerged a third element. The conventions of literary expressionwere challenged by a clutch of avant-gardewriterswho provideda matrix for the Dada and Surrealistmovements. Even the analogies between poetry and mathematicswere explored. One has only to readMircea Eliade's Autobiography to become convinced of the vitality,diversity,and sophistication of intellectual expression which led the Romanian-born cartoonist Saul Steinberg to describe Bucharest as 'an art Deco world peopled by Byzantine man. Mihail Sebastian, born Josif Hechter in I907 in the Danubian port of Braila, made his own particularmark in the Romanian capital during these years. At the time when he starteda diaryin 1935, at the age of twenty-eight, he was a respected novelist, playwright and journalist. He counted Eliade amongst his friends, alongside Eugene lonesco, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Camil Petrescu,ConstantinVisoianu and Ghita Ionescu. The firstfifty pages of his diary record his encounters with them, as well as with a stringof girl-friendsover whose charms Sebastian self-centredlymuses and sometimes pines. Sebastian's love of French literature and classical music suffuse the journal, creatingan effectof undisturbedleisure. Yet within a year, an erosion of Sebastian's comfortable existence sets in. There is a change of tone in the diary as it becomes a unique and moving testimony to the complicity of the Romanian intelligentsia in the rise of the Iron Guard. This extreme right-wing movement brings out the anti-Semitic demons in members of Sebastian's circle. The Guard's anti-Semitism also appealed to the population at large. Under the government of Octavian Goga -an accomplished poet anti-Semitism was raised to the level of statepolicy. One of Goga's firststepsasprime ministerin December I937 was to suppress Jewish-owned newspapers on the grounds of their 'subversive meddling'. He also cancelled licences to sell alcohol held by Jews, suspended 1500 Jewish lawyers from practising in Bucharest, and placed a ban on the employment of Jews and foreigners in cafes and restaurants. In February I938, King Carol suspended the constitution and instituted a royal dictatorship during the course of which further anti-Semitic legislation was introduced. After Carol was forced to abdicate in September I940, General Ion Antonescu took over as militarydictatorin alliance with the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard government introduced further anti-Semitic legislation expropriatingreal estate, forestland, and shippingowned byJews. In January I941, after suppressing an Iron Guard rebellion, Antonescu appointed a new cabinet drawn almost entirely from the armed services and the Iron Guard was dissolved. Nevertheless, the anti-Semitic measures REVIEWS 367 introduced in August I940 were consolidated in 194I by the creation of the National Centre for Romanianization. Despite itscatalogue of anti-Semitism,it is not so much the Romanian state that disturbs Sebastian during these years, but his friends. As the diary progresses we see how they with the exception of Eugene Jonesco and Visoianu graduallywithdraw from his circle, ultimately abandoning him. The reader senses Sebastian's pain but marvels at the same time at his tolerance as he calmly endures the anti-Semitic barbsaddressedto his people by outstanding intellectual minds such as Eliade. More than once one is tempted to urge Sebastian to tell his erstwhile friendsto 'go to hell'. Yet it is precisely because he remains in contact with these figures that the true dimensions of Romanian anti-Semitismare relayedto us first-hand. Translatedinto actionbyAntonescu, thatanti-Semitismgave theHolocaust in Romania its own specific featureswhich marked it out from the killing of theJews in otherspartsof Europe and the Soviet Union. The solution to what Antonescu euphemistically termed the Jewish Problem' did not rely on the systematic, mechanical slaughter of Jews although the Romanian and German armies murdered by mass shooting more...