The National Avowal
The National Avowal

Summary/Abstract: This essay is the first philosophical reading of the new Hungarian Fundamental Law. Its method is to reconstruct the ideas substantiating it by way of analysing its preambulum, entitled National Avowal. The preamble’s stylistic -terminological register is claimed to point back to the Reform Age of the 19th century. The Fundamental Law presents a view of Hungarian history, in which liberty and individual freedoms, as well as communal values play an important role. However, it also refers to Christian and other religions and worldviews, and to the historical constitution of the country – which makes it a directly conservative manifesto, coonected to the the Burkean tradition. The paper also shows that because admittedly the constitutional process resulted in a present legitimacy deficit for the Basic Law, it might have a longer impact only in case the Constitutional Court and other legal practitioners are ready to interpret it in a way which allows that the part of society whose represdentatives did not participate in the process, can find their values in the text. The fate of its reference to the Historical Constitution of the Country is also mainly in the hands of the Constitutional Court.

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