Lucian Blaga

Lucian Blaga was a prominent philosopher in Eastern Europe during the period
between the two world wars. Trained in both Eastern Orthodox theology and
classical philosophy, he developed a “speculative” philosophy that includes books on
epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, philosophy of culture, philosophical
anthropology, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, and philosophy of
religion. A chair in philosophy of culture was created for him at the University of
Cluj, a leading Romanian university of the period, now Babes-Bolyai University.

Unfortunately, the height of Blaga’s career coincided with WWII, after which
Romania was occupied by Soviet troops that installed a socialist government. The
new government removed Blaga and many other professors from their university
posts. Although Blaga was forbidden to teach and publish, he continued to study and
write. Eventually thirty-four of his books of philosophy were published. At the heart
of his philosophical publications are four trilogies that constitute a systematic
philosophy, a feat that has rarely been attempted since Hegel. He also published
books of poetry and theater, plus one novel.

Today Blaga is a national figure in Romania, but because of the unfortunate

circumstances surrounding his career, he is barely known to the outside world.
However, because of his creativity and systematic vision, his work is being actively
studied in Europe in the 21st century. There are those who argue that this mid-
20th century philosopher can make valuable contributions to issues that philosophers
are still struggling with today.
This article begins by explaining Blaga’s intellectual formation, which provides a
context for understanding his philosophy. It then introduces the main features of his
philosophical system and provides a bibliography of primary and secondary sources
for further study.

Lucian Blaga (1895-1961) was the son of a village priest. The village was Lancram,
an ethnically Romanian village on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The priest was Isidor Blaga, an avid reader who seems to have enjoyed studying
German philosophy as much as Orthodox theology. Isidor only reluctantly accepted
the priestly vacancy in Lancram that was created by the premature death of his own
father. A lack of finances to continue his education made this choice a necessity, but
the priestly vocation was not Isidor’s original goal: he seems to have harbored more
academic aspirations. His interest in higher learning, his interest in philosophy and
his personal library would leave a profound imprint on his youngest son.

Life in the Romanian village too left a profound imprint on Blaga. A Romanian
village of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was essentially unaltered
from medieval times. There was no industry and little mechanization to speak of.
The economy was agricultural. The only schooling was a one-room primary school.
Yet, a wealth of traditional wisdom preserved in legends, ballads, poems, and
perhaps especially the multitude of proverbs and aphorisms that Lucian Blaga later
collected and published in several volumes, provided its own kind of philosophical
insight. The culture of the Romanian village would be the subject of Blaga’s
acceptance speech given at his induction into the Romanian Academy in 1936.

Because of the dismal academics of the village elementary school and the complete
lack of a high school, Isidor and his wife, Ana, sacrificed to send Lucian to private
boarding schools. The urban centers in Transylvania were either Hungarian or
German, and as a result the best educational opportunities were in Hungarian or
German schools. The first school that Blaga attended was a German boarding school
in the nearby town of Sebes. Here he studied in German and read important German
thinkers. Blaga next enrolled in the prestigious Andrei Saguna High School in the
city of Brasov where he studied German, Hungarian, Latin, and Greek. He was
particularly interested in the natural sciences, the philosophy of science, and also
world religions. A senior thesis was required for graduation from Andrei Saguna:
Blaga’s was on Einstein’s relativity and Poincare’s non-Euclidean geometry.
Blaga intended to enroll in a German university upon graduation, but the onset of
WWI prevented this. He took the only option open to him besides military service:
he enrolled in the Romanian Orthodox seminary in Sibiu, another Transylvanian
city. Although he neither enjoyed nor excelled at the more pastoral aspects of the
seminary curriculum, he surpassed his classmates in the theoretical areas of study.
During this period he especially increased his understanding of philosophy of
religion and the history of art.

Blaga completed his undergraduate degree in 1917 and enrolled in the PhD program
in philosophy at the University of Vienna. During this time he published his first two
books, a book of poetry and a book of aphorisms, which sold well in Romania and
helped him finance his studies. He successfully defended his dissertation in
November of 1920. It was titled Kultur und Erkenntnis (Culture and Knowledge).
Blaga’s life experiences growing up in a multicultural region (Transylvania was
populated by Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Gypsies, and several smaller
minority groups); experiencing the contrast between the peasant village and the
modern city; and studying Eastern Orthodox theology and liturgy side by side with
European philosophy, history, and science spawned in him a philosophical outlook
that gives prominent place to philosophy of culture. Within the broad framework of
culture Blaga finds places for science, art, history, and religion.

Blaga’s philosophical system interacts with the theories of classical and

contemporary philosophers and intellectuals. These range from the pre-
Socratics through early twentieth century philosophers like William James, Edmund
Husserl, and Henri Bergson, and also intellectuals such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund
Freud, and Paul Tillich. The influence of Plotinus, Kant, and the German Romantics is
clearly evident. But Blaga’s philosophy is not merely an attempt to synthesize the
insights of other thinkers. It is a systematic and integrated attempt to address the
issues that occupied the leading minds of his day.
Blaga’s early philosophical career involved research and publication rather than
teaching. He published many articles and a number of books, and served as an editor
for several literary magazines. His publications range from fiction to philosophy. His
first book of philosophy, Filosofia stilului (The Philosophy of Style), was published in
1924. He also served his country as a statesman. In 1936 he was inducted into the
Romanian Academy (a prestigious research institution). Finally in 1938 a special
chair of philosophy of culture was created in his honor at the University of Cluj, a
leading Romanian university in Transylvania. His inaugural essay was titled Despre
plenitudinea istorica (Concerning Historical Fullness). He taught at the University of
Cluj until 1949, when he was removed from his post by the newly installed Socialist
government of Romania. After this he was not permitted to teach and was only
permitted to publish under strict supervision. After his death in 1961 a number of his
works were permitted to be posthumously published, and since the fall of Romanian
communism Blaga’s entire oeuvre has been republished.

Some philosophers philosophize about a range of topics without ever turning their
analytic skills to an analysis of philosophy itself. In contrast to this, Blaga begins his
systematic philosophy with an entire book dedicated to a critical discussion of
philosophy. The title of this book is Despre constiinta filosofica (Concerning
Philosophical Consciousness). It describes philosophy as a creative and constructive
attempt to understand reality. Therefore Blaga views the construction of a systematic
metaphysics as the pinnacle of the philosophical enterprise.
At the same time, Blaga rejects the notion that a philosophical system can ever
provide an ultimate analysis of reality. All philosophical systems are creative
interpretations that attempt to express reality symbolically through human
language. But despite this apparent futility inherent in the philosophical task, Blaga
views the attempt to “reveal” ultimate reality as the activity that brings humans
closest to fulfillment.

The philosophical method is characterized by the utilization of logic and the attempt
at objectivity, but subjectivity and style also have their place. Blaga elucidates the
proper function of each. He argues that every philosophical system has a central
thesis that orients the system. He names the orientation that this point provides the
“transcendental accent.” This accent is an expression of the style of the philosopher
who created it. For example, the knowledge of the Ideals, which serves as the
transcendental accent in Plato’s philosophy, seems to reflect Plato’s own expansive
personality and his drive to understand the many disparate aspects of his world.
It is not only the individual who is affected by controlling themes: such beliefs affect
entire cultures. Sometimes these themes enter the public subconscious and are
called “common sense.” Blaga recognizes that common sense beliefs often preserve
wisdom based upon a wealth of experiences, but also warns that they sometimes
preserve the prejudices and mistakes of previous generations. He then makes an
important and controversial observation about the relationship of philosophy to
common sense: whereas many Anglo-American philosophers have taken it upon
themselves to defend common sense, Blaga argues that a philosopher must shun the
conformist impulse underlying belief in common sense. A philosopher sometimes
needs to attack common sense beliefs in order to open up a space for greater
understanding.

This position vis-à-vis common sense could be taken as an indication that Blaga
views philosophy as a realist rather than a constructivist attempt to understand
reality. This would be at least partially mistaken, however. Blaga views philosophy
as a creative activity that is justified even when its results are mistaken, since it
deepens and enriches the understanding of the problematic of the human spirit.
Thus philosophical speculation is justified quite apart from the truthfulness of its
theories. Philosophy is justified by its fruitfulness, vision, suggestiveness, foresight,
and how it stirs the soul, even if its theories never attain complete perfection.

This seems to suggest that philosophy is closer to art than to science, a view that
would displease many analytic philosophers. Blaga finds both differences and
similarities between philosophy and science. The primary difference between
philosophy and science is methodological. Both begin with a set of objective data
(the aria) and with certain presuppositions about how the data will be handled (the
interior horizon of the problem). But while the data of science is very specific and the
presuppositions are detailed and complex, the data of philosophy includes all of
human experience and the presuppositions are very general. Because of this, a
scientific investigation is very closely controlled by its initial data and its
presuppositions; while philosophical investigation is open to many creative solutions
that the scientist would not consider. Initially this might seem like a disadvantage,
since it seems like an admission of the undisciplined nature of philosophical
investigation in comparison to the fairly rigid discipline of the natural sciences.
However, it also has a significant strength: Blaga points out that because of the very
specific aria and interior horizon of a scientific investigation, science
methodologically anticipates its solutions much more than philosophy does. Hence
philosophy is more open to discovering the unexpected.