The Ethical Theories of Aurel Kolnai

THE ETHICAL THEORIES OF AUREL KOLNAI AART FROM THOSE who knew him personally, it is doubtful that many attribute to Aurel Kolnai the importance that the penetration and fineness of his thought merited. To a degree this may have been the case because he lacked, by choice and by chance, an enduring group identity-doctrinal, ideological, cultural, and national. Born in Budapest of Jewish parents in 1900, he was throughout the first great war strongly pro-Ally. Following the war he went to the University of Vienna, where he earned a D.Phil. from both the philosophy and history faculties (Schlick, Gomperz, and von Mises were among his teachers). Later, he studied under Edmund Husserl and Martin Honecker in Freiburg. In the mid-twenties, influenced by G. K. Chesterton (whom he saw as a phenomenologist) and the German Phenomenological School of Philosophy, he was converted to Catholicism. Despite numerous philosophical publications, both books and articles, until 1945 he chose to be a writer and journalist rather than an academic . His writings dealt with many matters, ranging from political events in Germany and Austria, the thoughts of Belloc and Chesterton, and the "rule of money" in democracy, to the relationship between Fascism and Bolshevism, the ideology of progress, and the meaning of racial obsession. His approach was frequently polemical. After years of effort (one locale of which was a Vienna coffeehouse frequented by Austrian Nazis), he completed and saw published The War Against the West, a brilliant study of Nazi doctrines and policies. Up to the end of the 'thirties, he was, politically, sympathetic toward democratic socialism, but, among other things, the proclamation by a " progressive " association of French lycee teachers that the West did not have the moral right to defend itself against Hitler 's Germany caused a change of view, and he became what today would be called a neo-conservative, that is, a supporter THE ETHICAL THEORIES OF AUREL KOLNAI 183 of a liberal, capitalist, and, institutionally at any rate, democratic society. During the war, after internment in France and escape through Spain and Portugal, he and his wife, Elizabeth, found refuge in America, where he worked in journalism and for the Office of War Information. From 1945 to 1955 he taught in the Faculty of Philosophy, Laval University, after a short time as professeur agreg.e. At Laval, reasonably enough, his thought took on a Thomistic cast, although he was critical of the approach toward St. Thomas prevailing there. A resident of London from 1955 until his death in 1973, he was Visiting Lecturer in Ethics and Political Philosophy at Bedford College. During this period his philosophical endeavors acquired an " analytic " style, this being facilitated by a perceived agreement in theme between phenomenology and the British analytic school. From 1945 on he contributed an abundance of articles in philosophy to various journals in America, Canada, and England , and on the continent, in English, French, German, and Spanish, all of which, in addition to Hungarian, he spoke and wrote with distinction and native adeptness. He frequently read papers in England and abroad, and was Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University in 1968. In 1978 there appeared a volume of his papers, most previously published, edited by two former students of his at Bedford College, Mr. Brian Klug and Dr. Francis Dunlop, with a preface by Bernard Williams of Cambridge and David Wiggins of Bedford.1 Its purpose is to achieve a better balance between his accomplishments and public appreciation of them. The selections cover only his London period, but they are representative works of someone who was, above all and at all times, a unyielding foe of those who would debase the central features of human existence. The themes of the collection are many. A pervasive one is the perversity in assigning a near-divine status to human appetite. Another, closely related, is the wrongheadedness of egalitarianism, though he acknowledged its underlying moral urges. A third, also related to absolute human1 Ethics, Value and Reality, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1978. Originally published by The Athlone Press, University of London, London, 1977. 134 JOHN D. BEACH ism, is the threat posed by utopian dogmas. Yet another is the...