Romanian philosophy is the entirety of philosophy written by Romanian authors. The term can also be used to refer to all philosophy written in the Romanian language or to works of philosophers native to the region of Romania before the country's formation.
Historical outline
Beginnings
The first broadly philosophical texts attested on the Romanian territory are the Patristic writings. Among this corpus of texts, in Church Slavonic translations, the most important are the works of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite and the Dialectics of St. John Damascene. Excerpts from ancient philosophers circulated also. The only notable indigenous production of the epoch is The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to his Son, Theodosius, written around 1521. The book is a compilation of patristic and biblical sources, with many moral and political reflections, from an ascetic viewpoint. It illustrates Byzantine theocracy and proposes the model of a prince-monk.
17th century
In the middle of the 17th century, Romanian acquired the status of a liturgical language alongside Greek and Slavonic, and began to develop a philosophical vocabulary. Nicolae Milescu (1638–1708) authored the first translation of a philosophical text into Romanian (the treatise On the Dominant Reason of Pseudo-Josephus Flavius, translated towards 1688). Miron Costin (1633–1691) wrote the first philosophical poem in Romanian, Viaţa lumii (The Life of the World) (1672), an ethical reflection on earthly happiness. The most important philosophical production of this century is The Divan (1698) of Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723), a philosophical treatise which supports Orthodox ethics with rational arguments. This treatise was translated into Arabic for the use of the Syrian Christians, and, later, into Bulgarian.
Some philosophical texts were written in Latin. Gavril Ivul (1619–1678), a Jesuit who taught philosophy in the University of Vienna, wrote a logical treatise, Propositiones ex universa logica (1654). Cantemir authored a textbook of logic and a treatise of "theologo-physics", Sacrosanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago (1700) which, besides discussing the nature of time, and the problem of the universals, tries to justify Biblical cosmogony with non-theological arguments drawing on the philosophy of Jan Baptist van Helmont. He left also a text on the philosophy of history, Monarchiarum physica examinatio.
18th century
In the 18th century, the dominant philosophy in Moldavia and Walachia was the neo-Aristotelianism of Theophilos Corydalleus, which was in fact the Paduan neo-Aristotelianism of Zabarella, Pomponazzi and Cremonini. Towards the last quarter of the century, this was challenged by the spread of rationalism (Christian Wolff) and empiricism (John Locke). Important figures may be considered Samuel Micu (1745–1806) in Transylvania, and Iosif Moisiodax (1730–1800) in Moldavia. The first translated intensively from the Wolffian Baumeister, implicitly promoting the German Enlightenment. The last contributed to the modernization of the philosophical curriculum in the Princely Academies. He wrote an essay called The Apology, appealing for modern European philosophy and against the old Aristotelian Chorydaleian scholasticism. The philosophical language of this century was mostly Greek. One notable exception was the clucer Ioan Geanetu (Jean Zanetti), who published in 1787, in Greek and French, a treatise called Réfutation du traité d'Ocellus de la nature de l'univers. In this work he criticised an ancient conception regarding the eternity of the universe, in order to reinforce the faith of his correligionaries.
19th century The 19th century can be divided from the point of view of a history of philosophy into three periods: that of the final days of the Phanariote regime, that of the restoration of the Romanian dynasties and, finally, that of Charles I, who came from a foreign dynasty (Hohenzollern).
The End of the Phanariote Regime In the first two decades of the 19th century the most prominent philosophers in the Romanian Principalities were still the Greek professors of the Princely Academies, including Lambros Photiades, Konstantinos Vardalachos, Neophyte Doucas and Benjamin Lesvios in Bucharest, as well as Daniel Philippidis, Stephanos Doungas and Dimitrios Panayotou Govdelas in Iași. Some of them were alumni of the Academies from the Principalities, as Vardalachos, who studied with Photiades, himself an ancient student of the Princely Academy from Bucharest. Daniel Philippidis also studied at this Academy in the 1780s, under the philologist Neophyte Cavsocalyvitis. With the exception of Photiades, they had also studied in major Western universities. Doungas, for example, was a student of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. In his Physics he tried to reconcile the dogmatic Orthodox theology with the science of nature, following Schelling's system.
The Epoch of the Restored Autochthonous Dynasties After 1821, the ruling Princes were once again elected by local noblemen i.e. the boyars (and validated by the Sultan). Greek was replaced in the Academies with Romanian.
As early as 1818 the Transylvanian Gheorghe Lazăr (1779–1821), who studied in Vienna, began teaching philosophy in Romanian in the Greek-speaking Academy. According to one of his students, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, his courses were based on Kantian philosophy. For didactical purposes he decided to make a Romanian translation of some of Krug's works, which he subsequently used as a textbook. Krug's Handbook of Philosophy and Philosophical Literature was translated in the first period of the 19th century another three times, by August Treboniu Laurian, Timotei Cipariu and Simeon Barnutiu.
Eufrosin Poteca (1786–1858) studied in the Princely Academy from Bucharest with Vardalachos, Doukas and Lesvios and at the universities of Pisa and Paris (1820–1825). Eufrosin Poteca taught philosophy at the Saint Sava Academy, and was a translator of philosophical and theological works. His own philosophy was influenced by the Sensualism of Condillac, de Tracy and Soave, by Rousseau's political philosophy and by his strong Christian beliefs. He maintained that there are three metaphysical first principles, body, soul and spirit, studied by three distinct sciences: physics (the study of unanimated bodies), psychology (the study of animated things) and ideology (in the sense of de Tracy, the science of ideas). In his philosophy the whole universe displays this triadic structure, as it is permeated by matter, life and logos. He identified the laws of nature with the laws of God, and he drew from this conception many moral conclusions, e.g. the lack of foundation of celibacy. He thought that the foundation of all morals, politics and rights is the golden rule. From here he argued against slavery, and as a result was exiled to a Gura Motrului monastery, where he lived until the end of his life.
Ionică Tăutul (1798–1828) was a Moldavian boyar educated at home by some French refugees. He quoted Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, but also obscure writers such as Sabatier de Castre. His ideas were disseminated mostly in his correspondence and political pamphlets but also in works like Construction of Politics according to Human Nature or Essay against Deists and Materialists. His intention was to build a political theory starting from a Christian anthropology of the state of nature. The political system to be justified by such a procedure was an "aristo-democratic republic". The second essay, whose title is inspired by Mersenne, criticizes the materialist vision of the man-machine (La Mettrie) on the basis of a rather Paulinic doctrine of the "amphibian" character of man, character which clearly distinguishes him from the natural world.
Alexandru Hâjdeu (1811–1872) was a student of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling in Berlin. Although very proud of his Moldavian origin, he was an ardent Russian patriot, since he lived in Bessarabia, the Moldavian territory annexed by Russia. His philosophy was concerned with the destiny of Russia, and he was a slavophil and a messianist. He argued for the development of a purely Russian philosophy, emerging from the careful study of the Russian language. According to him, only such a philosophy could be national, an only this way the Russian element could be brought to universality. The way to arrive at such a philosophy is to continue the thinking of Skovoroda, the only authentic Russian philosopher up to then, which would fulfil the moment of existence for itself of the Russian nation.
Ioan Zalomit (1820–1885) studied philosophy in France and in Germany, at Berlin, with Victor Cousin and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. He obtained here the title of doctor of philosophy with a thesis on Kant (1848). In his inaugural dissertation, Zalomit tried to overcome the Kantian opposition between laws of nature and moral laws. He affirmed that liberty is inherent to nature, so that the moral laws are in fact laws of nature. All the moral actions are thus the result of a "duty towards nature" and it is only this way that a rational theodicy is possible.
Simeon Bărnuțiu (1808–1864) taught philosophy at Blaj College, at Mihaileana Academy and, finally, at University of Iași. His remaining published courses are mostly adaptations after Krug. He was the first Romanian philosopher preoccupied with the philosophy of law. He considered Romanian law to be a direct continuation of Roman law and advocated for a return to Roman law principles, as well as for the introduction of Latin neologisms in Romanian language. His political activity was centered around the rights of Romanians in Transylvania, and his philosophical views were employed in the defense of his political stances several times, including in Blaj Pronouncement. The main arguments were based on the principle of natural law.
Ion Heliade Rădulescu (1802–1872) studied at the Princely Academy from Bucharest, under Constantin Vardalah, and from 1818 the Romanian classes of Gheorghe Lazăr. After the death of Lazăr he became a teacher in the Academy and he had a prodigious activity as a cultural animator. In 1828 he published an "almost philosophical" (in his words) Gramatica românească (Romanian Grammar), influenced by Condillac, which he knew from his Greek teachers. After the turmoil of the 1848 Revolution, Heliade Rădulescu comes up with a philosophical system, inspired from kabala and the socialism of Proudhon and Fourier. There are also traces of Hegel's influence, but not directly read (he knew him probably from the works of Cousin). His two most important works are Historia critică universală (The Universal Critical History) and Equilibru între antithesi sau Spiritul şi materia (Equilibrium between Antitheses).
Heliade Rădulescu proposed, against monisms and dualisms of all kind, a trinitarian philosophy. He affirmed that all philosophical concepts come in dualities, which can be classified in two categories: sympathetic (or parallel) and antipathetic. A sympathetic duality is formed by two "positive" terms, which indicate an existence: time / space; spirit / matter; right / duty etc. An antipathetic duality contains a positive and a negative term: life / death; movement / inertia; good / evil. Each sympathetic duality produces a third term, through which the dualism is overcome in the form of active principle – passive principle – (generate) a result, for example: spirit / matter / universe; form / substance / body; progress / conservation / perfectibility; spiritual man / physical man / moral man. Beginning from here, Heliade Rădulescu developed a kind of cosmology. In his view, the spirit, being immaterial, can only come into contact with the matter through the mediation of the matter's most immaterial parts.
The Epoch of Charles I (Carol I)