The paper discusses an important aspect of André Scrima’s writings: the way he uses history from the perspective of the theory of revelation. The paper presents some examples (communism, the situation of Jerusalem seen from the perspective of the conflicts in the Middle East), then analyses the main lines of the interpretive methods used by Scrima in describing and understanding these. The historical sense which observes in time, and through transient institutions, the forms of manifestation of transcendence works from this perspective as a critical and hermeneutic agenda related to events and historical figures.
Volume XXIII (2018), no. 2
Contents
Studies
The Romanian elites, educated abroad, acknowledged the necessity towards major changes in different areas concerning the society and the state. Since the second half of the 19th century, the local elites following the European pattern, gradually, also founded associations (sports clubs) in order to get closer to the West, while also modernising the Romanian state. Our paper explicitly aims to investigate how particular associations (sports clubs) encouraged the development of tourism and public utility in modern Romania. Therefore, Jockey Club Român (1875) [the Romanian Jockey Club], Automobil-Club Român (1904) [the Romanian Automobile Club], Liga Națională Aeriană (1912) [the National Air League] were societies created by some ardent people, attaining a more consolidated position over time. Naturally, the leisure perspective was essential, but, gradually, the economic dimension found its place in the concerns of certain members of the Romanian elites. Helping the tourism and the public utility routes develop in the country was also present among the concerns of the Romanian leading classes.
The present article is based on the disputes caused by the means of organising the central and local museums from La Belle Époque, in order to identify certain concepts regarding heritage, as well as certain arguments that supported such concepts. Considering the clashes or convergences between different epistemes of that time, the present paper exploits the academic polemics in order to emphasise the ways in which the development of sciences was – more or less directly – reflected by the evolution of the representations of the past. Thus, these confrontations are illustrated by appealing to the dominant figures of the Romanian cultural life from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
Drawing on Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory and Marianne Hirsch’s notion of postmemory, this article examines how personal recollections of Mihai Eminescu’s life (1850-1889) entered the Romanian cultural and literary circuit. At the time of his death, Eminescu’s prestige as a „national poet” was already established, thence at this moment precisely, I argue, starts a complex and collective process of national remembrance, reinforcing the cultural myth of the Romantic poet. In the following decades these recollections are continuously reworked and rewritten, especially through biographical, literary, and filmic representations which shape and canonize Eminescu’s postmemory. Thus my analysis is concerned with the memory-dimension of the Romanian myth of the “national poet”, and at the same time it suggests a new way of reading the memoirs about Eminescu, in the frame of cultural memory studies.
This study represents a historical and theoretical analysis of the Romanian foreign policy during the Romanian neutrality. We tried to articulate and elaborate a strong theoretical framework for our analysis. Thus we used different concepts belonging to the theory of international relations, such as national interest, alliances, realism, structural realism, constructivism etc. The Romanian political class aimed to achieve the national interest. We demonstrated that the Romanian state played the role of a rational actor, deliberately delaying the intervention in the war. The authorities were aware of the precariousness of military instruction, of the low level of competitiveness and, especially, the poor supply of war materials and munitions. Ion I. C. Brătianu decided on the involvement in the Great Conflagration only when he considered that the entry into action will require, if possible, minimal risks and losses with maximum benefits. Romania's decision to join the Entente was also delayed because of the presence of Russia in this alliance, even if France tended to assume the role of mediator during the Russo-Romanian negotiations, especially during 1915. Then, the Romanian diplomacy strove to obtain the recognition of all its claims regarding the future frontiers of the Romanian state. We emphasized the reasons of the Romanian Kingdom’s apprehensions to the great power of the East. These apprehensions originated in the historical precedents.
The article aims to relaunch in the scientific circuit Tiron Albani’s memoirs, from which only an abridged and censored fragment was published on the occasion of the semi-centennial of the Union. Preserved in a typewritten form at the “Octavian Goga” County Library, the manuscript is a unique memorialistic work and a valuable documentary source, especially for the history of the Transylvanian Romanian social democratic movement from its beginnings as a section of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary to the interwar period, as it was seen by one of its leaders. In addition to the description of the manuscript, the article focuses on the intervention of the communist censorship in the fragment related to the Great Union published in 1968.
This paper proposes an outline of the history of Constantin Noica’s ideas in order to identify the origin of his thoughts and discover the place of his writings on Romanian cultural identity within his philosophical system. I will prove that in his first writings (from the 1930s) Noica follows Kantian idealism, while in his later work (1940s, and mainly beginning with 1950) he is closer to Hegel, also announcing the premises and the structure of his future ontological system, while his texts dedicated to Romanian cultural identity (1970–1978) are dependent in their ideas both on Hegelian idealism and organicism and on the Romanticist philosophy of language. At the same time, I will demonstrate that Noica’s anti-political attitude is a result of his philosophy as well as of his philosophical biography.
The present article is an approach to Bernard of Clairvaux’s treaty On Consideration. Its reading follows the arguments of a thesis according to which this text has a political theology dimension and it could be included in a history on the evolution of the concept “state of exception”, as it was defined by Giorgio Agamben. The primary argument is that Bernard, in order to convince Pope Eugene III of the need to resume the crusade, used the patristic concepts of spiritual formation to legitimise the Pope’s right to make political decisions above the rules, in the name of the divine inspiration of the one who was formed spiritually.
This paper is an analysis of Gradiva’s affinities with (pre-)Christian symbolism through the discussion of two texts representing Gradiva: Ghirlandaio’s Birth of Saint John the Baptist and Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva. A Pompeian Fancy. This article analyses the symbolism of fire and cinders in Jensen’s texts as well as the relations of this symbolism with Saint John the Baptist via the figure of Gradiva. Taking on theoretical concepts from Bachelard’s Psychoanalysis of Fire and Derrida’s Cinders, this paper suggests that Gradiva symbolizes the anima figure which, having been repressed through an Apollonian preference, reemerges in key moments in the art and literature of different epochs.