THE LIFE and THOUGHT of AUREL KOLNAI to Anna the Life and Thought of Aurel Kolnai

THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF AUREL KOLNAI To Anna The Life and Thought of Aurel Kolnai FRANCIS DUNLOP Honorary Lecturer University of East Anglia, UK First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing Reissued 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXl 4 4RN 711 ThirdAvenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an ieforma business Copyright © Francis Dunlop 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made eveiy effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00065040 ISBN 13: 978-1-138-72864-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19043-3 (ebk) Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction viii 1 Family and School (1900-1918) 1 2 Political Development (1916-1919) 19 3 War, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (1918-1920) 36 4 Kolnai's Psychoanalytic Episode (1920-1926) 51 5 Early Days in Vienna (1920-1924) 65 6 University Studies and Related Publications (1922-1930) 86 7 Political Journalism or Philosophy? (1920-1930) 109 8 Fighting for the West in Vienna (1930-1937) 130 9 Peripatetic (1937-1940) 154 10 New York and Boston (1940-1945) 179 11 Quebec(1945-1955) 203 12 England or Spain? (1952-1961) 229 13 England - Early Difficulties (1958-1964) 253 14 The Last Fifteen Years (1958-1973) 272 Appendix: Kolnai's Attitude to the Catholic Faith 301 Notes 305 Select Bibliography of Kolnai's Published Works and o f Works about Kolnai 330 Index 337 Acknowledgements I have received much help and encouragement over at least a decade in writing this book. I would like first to thank the following people, who have helped me in various ways as private individuals: Prof. Elizabeth Anscombe, Prof. Leslie Armour, Mr Peter Ayrton, Mme Catherine Back, Dr A. De Tôszeghi, Prof. Léon Dionf, Mrs Joanna Dodsworth, Dr Judith Dupont, M. Ferenc Fejtô, Mrs Jean Flood CBE, Brother Francis SIHM, Prof. Dr Rafael Gambra, M. Claude Germain, Miss Lisbeth Gombricht, Mr George Gômôri, Dr Donald Grant, Mrs Irene Grantf, Frau Dora Haag-Keller, Dr Karin von Harnos, Prof. Alice von Hildebrand, Dr Endre Kiss, Prof. Brian Klug, Prof. Nicholas Kurtif, Dr Alan Lacey, Dr Gyôrgy Litvân, Dr David Lloyd- Thomas, Miss Sarah Lumley-Smith, Prof. Pierre Manent, Prof. Bernard Mayo, Dr Alfred Missong, Mrs Cate Mullins, Prof. Dr Juan Miguel Palacios, Prof. D.Z. Phillips, Mrs Maria Schmidt, Prof. Emeritus Francis Seton, Miss Esther Simpsonf OBE, Mr George Szirtes, Senator Arthur Tremblayf, Mrs Pauline Tremblay, Mrs Doreen Vaughan, Prof. David Wiggins, Prof. Bernard Williams, Mme Claude Winkler, Prof. Tom Zolnay. Special thanks are due to the following: Prof. Dr Miguel Ayuso (who acted as the representative Prof. Dr Victor Marrerof in Madrid, and gave me valuable comments on the Spanish chapter), Dr Zoltán Balâzs (who gave much informative help over Hungarian matters), Prof. John D. Beach and Mrs Sunny Beach (who, as well as sending me Kolnai's letters, entertained me in their house in Spain), Prof. Thomas DeKoninck (jnr) (who helped me with the Quebec chapter and made available to me copies of Kolnai's written communications with his father), Mrs Susi Lanyi (who wrote me so many friendly and informative letters, entertained my wife and myself in Oberlin, and provided hundreds of letters written to her late husband, George), Prof. Jeanne Lapointe (who, as well as corresponding and suffering an interview, sent me annotated books Kolnai had sent her from England), Mr Csaba Nagy (who gave me permission to copy Bela Menczer's Memoirs), Dr Nicholas Nathan (whose encouragement was crucial in getting this book published), Miss Szylvia Tôth (who discovered things for me in Budapest, and whose parents put me up during my visits to The Life and Thought of Aurel Kolnai vii the city), and Mr Robert R. Vambéry (who answered a great many questions about his old friend with enormous thoroughness and sent numerous Kolnaian letters). I would also like to thank the following for giving me copies or letting me see their collections of Kolnai letters: Frau Annegret Hartmann, Mrs Eszter Kelemen, Ms Judit Kinszky, Sr D Salvador Pons and Mrs Cynthia Read. Libraries where I have consulted and copied documents and letters include those of Columbia University, NY, Concordia University, Montreal, the Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstands 1934-45, Vienna, Laval University, Quebec, the Pet=>fi Irodalmi Muzeum, Budapest, and the Vienna University Archives. I have also been helped by M. Laurent Tailleur, Archiviste du Séminaire de Québec, and by Miss Jill Duncan, Librarian of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London. I must acknowledge here permission to quote material from the Kolnai files of the Immigration department of the Home Office, and the archive of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning in The Bodleian Library, Oxford. Thanks are due, finally, to the Philosophy Department of King's College, University of London, for a photocopying grant. Introduction Aurel Kolnai was bom to Jewish parents in Budapest on December 5th? 1900. He died in a London hospital of a heart attack on June 28th? 1973. During those seventy-two and a half years he lived, successively, in Budapest, Vienna, Paris, New York, Boston, Quebec and, finally, London. Kolnai is primarily known in English and American academic circles as a moral philosopher and conservative political thinker, though in Vienna he is perhaps better known as a member of the Psychoanalytical Association, and then again as a Christian leftist journalist. Although he never held or tried for political office, he was engaged on the fringe of the 1918 ’’Chrysanthemum Revolution’’ in Hungary, and then again as part of the Christian democratic movement in Austria, when the country began to move towards Fascism. Apart from that, he was always active as a philosophically inclined writer on politics, with special attention to National Socialism in the thirties, and then, during the early years of the Cold War, to Communism. His experience of university teaching was very limited, and the only full-time post he ever held was at the Catholic Laval University, in Quebec, from 1945 to 1955. In London he never managed to obtain more than a part-time post, lecturing at Bedford College from 1959, with temporary visiting fellowships at Birmingham, England and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kolnai’s life was dogged by bad luck and what he himself diagnosed as simple ’’failure”. Three of his books were never finished (two being ’’overtaken by events"), one was lost in the war before it could be published, and another was not printed because the publisher went bankrupt. He was never able to settle in an environment conducive to the full working out of his fundamental insights, and the formation of a ’’school". But, in any case, his character was such that he would never have accepted a flock of disciples, and his "failure", if it really was failure, was to a large extent the result of his own lack of balance and practical wisdom. But his philosophical work, in moral and political philosophy, especially in the diagnosis of the "utopian mind", is of enormous interest and importance, as the academic community is gradually beginning to discover. Several works have now been posthumously published and others Introduction ix are being translated and reprinted. But because his work is so scattered, being written in five different languages and appearing in rather more countries, a general awareness of it is bound to be a slow and laborious process. But the relevance of his best work is perhaps greater than ever, as the Western world ever more wholeheartedly embraces the subtler forms of totalitarian tyranny, which Kolnai so clearly understood. Quite apart from the importance of his philosophy, Kolnai was an extraordinarily interesting man, who made a very strong impression wherever he was known. He was a fascinating conversationalist and raconteur, with a wonderful memory, powerful sensitivity and a grotesque sense of humour. He was also a great letter-writer, and, as he put so much of himself into his correspondence, the survival of many hundreds of letters to his friends goes to make up for the fact that he had no Boswell at his elbow to remember and record the things he said. He also left behind a few very interesting youthful diaries, and other material which, together with the letters, and often copious marginal comments in his books, yields a full picture of his life and character.1 I have so far said nothing about Kolnai's own account of his life. These memoirs were to have been published in 1956, but the project was abandoned. Many attempts were made by Mrs Kolnai, after her husband's death, and then by Professor David Wiggins and others, to get them published, but nothing ever came of it until 1999, when Lexington Books brought out Francesca Murphy's edition.2 So the question arises: "Why a biography, when we have Kolnai's own memoirs?" Quite apart from the stock answer to this: that a person is not always the best writer of his own life, there are several reasons why a biography is needed.

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