Science/Economics paper by Szilágyi-Gál, Mihály
Antipolitics in Hungary
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Political extremism is a form of rejection of the political institutions of a community. In some cases it may be both a form of “internal” dissidence within one’s own political community and at the same time anti-cosmopolitan. My analysis addresses two opposing forms of “internal” dissidence in the last three decades of Hungarian political history: pro-democratic anti-Soviet opposition and the present extreme right-wing opposition. The pro-democratic, anti-Soviet antipolitical opposition as conceived by György Konrád in 1982 did not propose indifference toward politics but rather the alternative of an autonomous civil society functioning parallel to the official political power. As such it was cosmopolitan and anti-essentialist advocating the joint pursuit of political agreement through deliberation instead of one group claiming to represent one single truth. In contrast, the “apolitics” of the extreme Right is anti-cosmopolitan by advocating one single truth of a particular national community and by rejecting the joint pursuit of consensus through deliberation. My thesis is that whereas pro-democratic antipolitics is dissident in its critical stance toward political power, extremist apolitics is dissident toward any deliberative society.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Mihály Szilágyi-Gál (1971) is assistant professor at the Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies, ELTE University of Sciences in Budapest. Szilágyi-Gál studied philosophy and political science in Budapest, Debrecen, and Tübingen. His area of research is focused on topics in aesthetics and modern political philosophy. Some of his most important publications are „The disinterested Authonomy of Judging. Kant’s, Schiller’s and Arendt’s Shared Conception of Freedom”. (Az ítélés érdekmentes autonómiája. Kant, Schiller és Arendt közös szabadságfelfogása) in: Fogódzó nélkül. Hannah Arendt Olvasókönyv (Suportless. A Hannah Arendt Reader). Bratislava. Kalligram, 2008; „Thomas Hobbes’ Criticism of the Public Sphere” in: Berliner Vorträge der Deutsch-Ungarischen Gesellschaft für Philosophie.