Daniel Şandru, Public intellectuals, ideological options, and “political religions”. The case of interwar Romania
Public intellectuals, ideological options, and “political religions”. The case of interwar Romania
The main goal of this contribution is to discuss the intellectuals’ social and political role. By placing this issue within the timeframe of interwar Romania all I do is to subscribe to a line of research whose minimal aim is to assume the past. Of course, this is not a new thing, seeing that the entire European area is still owing an answer to the question: “why was totalitarianism possible?”. From my viewpoint, a major role in the creation of the conditions of possibility for the political evil specific to this type of regime was played by intellectuals. In this respect, my intention is to show that, including in the Romanian area, well-known intellectuals were not mere prisoners of totalitarian illusions – regardless of whether we refer to Nazism or Bolshevism – but they were actively involved, through their writings and public speeches, in the promotion of these genuine “political religions”. The beliefs which dominant intellectuals managed to impose, in a given socio-historical context, as a realissimum – a term taken from Eric Voegelin’s political theory – were able to alter the socio-political evolution of entire societies and even to justify violence. Thus, they justified precisely the anti-political nature of totalitarian ideologies. In my opinion, this interpretative analysis is also applicable to some famous intellectuals from interwar Romania.
Keywords: interwar Romania, intellectuals, ideology, political religions, authoritarianism, crisis of democracy
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