Kolnai Aurél és „a politikai” fenomenológiája
Aurél Kolnai and the Phenomenology of “the Political”

Summary/Abstract: There is no well-articulated and easily identifiable place in the philosophical canon for Aurél Kolnai, despite the fact that he has been championed by such luminaries of contemporary philosophy, who have written detailed essays on his thought, as Pierre Manent, Bernard Williams, David Wiggins, Dan Mahoney, John Haldane or Axel Honneth. When this paper examines his position on “the political”, what we are really looking at is his view of the relationship between politics and ethics, and between politics and philosophy. This paper will focus on two texts by Kolnai. One is a relatively early German-language work entitled What is Politics about? This work was originally published in 1933, which, if you look at the political context, makes this debate with Carl Schmitt quite fascinating. The English title of the other paper is The Moral Theme in Political Division, originally published in 1960, three decades after the previous paper. In the analysis of these works, the contrast between the Machiavellian-Carl Schmitt-like conception of politics and a broader Aristotelian-communal approach will be in focus. While the first paradigm relies on the conflictual nature of politics and takes political emergencies crucial, the second one emphasises the cohesive forces, coordination and cooperation of the community in the everyday life of politics. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that the author’s position offers an alternative to the typical Schmitt-like position, without becoming naively moralistic. In this interpretation, Kolnai’s phenomenological philosophy plays a major role, determining his understanding of the concept of “the political”.

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