Iván Zoltán Dénes#

Read examples of Iván Dénes' articles:

A. Liberty versus Common Good

The functions and territories of academies and universities have never been totally independent from the outside world, nor can we revert to earlier stages of the history of these institutions. Therefore, we have to understand and judge them according to their components in order to find the proper responses to various challenges, and we have to make continuous efforts to be as independent and autonomous as possible in the context of cooperation and the building of collective wisdom. The keywords of this article are personal liberty, political freedom, concentration versus separation of powers, efficiency, meritocracy, common good, and political community.

Published in
European Review, Vol. 18, Supplement no. 1, S89–S97
DOI:10.1017/S1062798709990330

Read the whole article

B. Reinterpreting a ‘Founding Father’: Kossuth Images and Their Contexts, 1848-2009

Abstract: The present article reconstructs the ways the public and historiographical image of Lajos Kossuth, the central figure of the 1848–49 revolutionary tradition in Hungary, was negotiated during the last 150 years. Similar to the images of other founding fathers and national heroes in other cultures—such as Garibaldi, Piłsudski, Atatürk, Mazzini, Herzl, Masaryk, Bismarck, or Al. I. Cuza—the competing representations of Lajos Kossuth formed a central part of the political and scientifi c discourses throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to the most common images of the cultic “father of the nation” and “national Messiah,” one can encounter such diff erent schemes of collective self-projection as the “overly emotive opposition politician,” the “successful gentry,” the nobleman “defending his class privileges,” or the “inconsistent revolutionary.” Arguably, these images to a large extent fit four political languages determining Hungarian public discourse in the given period, such as “conservative realism,” ethno-protectionism, Marxist socialism, and communism. While these political languages were very different from each other, they were strikingly similar in the sense that they were built on strong enemy images. Consequently, analyzing their historical projections we can learn about the traumatic ways their adherents related to political modernity, manifested in visions of a fundamental enemy endangering the future of the community.

Published in:
East Central Europe 37 (2010) 90–117, brill.nl/eceu

Read the whole article

C. The Political Role of Hungary's Nineteenth-Century Conservatives and How They Saw Themselves

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Hungarian conservatives made a number of attempts decisively to influence the course of events in the Austrian empire and in the kingdom of Hungary, but failed on each occasion. What exactly had they wanted, and why did they fail to achieve it? How did they try to appear to others, and how did they see themselves? What political identity, if any, did they have? Was there anything special about the way their political activity and their perception of themselves bore on one another as compared to other nineteenth-century conservatives? What follows is an attempt to give answers to these questions.

Published in:
The Historical Journal, 26, 4 (1983), pp. 845-865

Read the whole article

D. Le mouvement Estudiantin à Budapest en 1969 (Student movement in Budapest in 1969) (in French)

La faculté de lettres de l’Université Loránd Eötvös de Budapesta a connu, en mars 1969, un mouvement de contestation. Des cercles de la Jeunesse communiste, seule organisation légale des étudiants à l’époque, ont protesté contre une décision des organes centraux visant à sanctionner ceux qu’ils qualitifaient de « maoïstes ». Cela prit une telle ampleur qu’une assemblée générale étudiante fut convoquée ; Kádár en personne se rendit même sur le lieu de la contestation dès le printemps. Finalement l’affaire fut si bien étouffée que l’auteur dut faire preuve d’une grande persévérance pour trouver les archives et regrouper les témoignages épars. Cet épisode singulier de la fin des années 1960, marquée en Europe centrale par les crises polonaises de 1968 et 1970, ou tchécoslovaque de 1968, montre la proximité des désirs de changement au sein du système en place, et ses difficultés à y répondre. Mais la mémoire évanescente de l’événement indique aussi combien il est malaisé, depuis 1989, de comprendre cette fin des années 1960 en Hongrie.

Published in:
Revue d'ètudes comparatives Est-Ouest, 2011, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 37-54

Read the whole article

E. Personal Liberty and Political Freedom

Four Interpretations

Abstract: By freedom, classical liberals meant non-interference, independence from the state, the personal and proprietary liberty of the governed. It is negative freedom as the antithesis both to absolutism and anarchy. In the republican interpretations, the freedom of a free political community is made possible and guaranteed by the institutionalization of the liberty of the political community. Political liberty is the medium, stage and precondition for the freedom of its members. That, in turn, is conditional upon the readiness of its members to protect the liberty of their community and themselves, i.e. upon the virtue of the free citizen. In this article I engage with four different interpretations of both kinds of liberty concepts in different discourses of the 20th-century UK and US and 20th–21st-century Hungary.

Published in
European Journal of Political Theory 2008; 7; 81
DOI: 10.1177/1474885107083405

The online version of this article can be found at: http://ept.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/1/81
Published by: SAGE Publications

Read the whole article.

F. Overcoming European Civil War: Patterns of Consolidation in Divided Societies, 2010–1800

Iván Zoltán Dénes
European Review / Volume 20 / Issue 04 / October 2012, pp 455 474
DOI: 10.1017/S106279871200004X, Published online: 04 September 2012

G. Adopting the European Model versus National Egoism: The Task of Surpassing Political Hysteria

Iván Zoltán Dénes
European Review / Volume 20 / Issue 04 / October 2012, pp 514 525
DOI: 10.1017/S1062798712000087, Published online: 04 September 2012