Alabert Fogarasi, also known as Béla Fogarasi (25 July 1891 – 28 April 1959) was a Hungarian philosopher and politician.
Life
Fogarasi was born as Béla Freid on 25 July 1891 in
Budapest, and studied in Budapest and
Heidelberg. In 1910 he translated
Henri Bergson's Introduction à la metaphysique into
Hungarian. He was a member of the so-called
Sunday circle around
Béla Balázs and
György Lukács. With
Karl Mannheim,
Arnold Hauser and
Ervin Szabó he was also involved in the Budapest Free School of Humanities, founded by Lukács. A December 1915 lecture on
historical materialism to the Hungarian Philosophical Society criticized
economic determinism.[1] His March 1918 lecture to a joint meeting of the Sunday Circle and the Sociological Society, 'Conservative and Progressive Idealism', opposed
positivism and associated radical politics with philosophical idealism.[2]
In December 1918 he joined the
Hungarian Communist Party and was appointed as editor of Vörös Újság (The Red Journal). In April 1919, speaking as director of the new Marx-Engels Workers' University, he lectured on 'The Philosophic Foundations of the Human Sciences', arguing that socialism needed to be joined to philosophy rather than the natural sciences.[3] He was Director of Higher Education in the
Hungarian Soviet Republic. After the Republic fell he emigrated to
Vienna, and from 1921 to 1930 lived in
Berlin, where he was a member of the
Communist Party of Germany. In 1921 he published "Observation on Scientific Education and the Proletariat" in Communist Review.[4] His Introduction to Marx's Philosophy appeared in 1921 or 1922, and in 1923 he reviewed
Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy for Die Internationale.[5] In 1923 he lectured, alongside Lukacs, at the
Marxist Work Week, out of which later grew the
Institute for Social Research.
In 1930 Fogarasi moved to
Moscow to work for the Comintern. A Fellow of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, he worked with
Eugen Varga, Stalin's economic advisor. In 1945 he returned to Budapest, where he became rector of the University of Economics. He received the
Kossuth Prize in 1952. He died in Budapest on 28 April 1959.
Works
(tr.) Bevezetés a metafizikába [Introduction to metaphysics] by
Henri Bergson. Translated from the French into Hungarian. 1910.
(tr.) Tudomány és vallás : a jelenkori philosophiában [Science and religion: contemporary philosophy] by
Émile Boutroux. Translated from the French to Hungarian. 1914.
Zalai Bela: In Memoriam, Budapest, 1916.
'Konservativ és progresszib idealizmus' [Conservative and progressive idealism], Huszadik Század, 19.nos. 1-6 (1918), pp. 193–206.
'The Tasks of the Communist Press', 1921. Reprinted in A. Mattelert & S. Sieglaub, eds., Communication and Class Struggle: Volume 1: Capitalism, Imperialism, 1979, pp. 149–52
Bevezetés a marxi filozófiába [Introduction to Marx's Philosophy], Vienna: Europa Verl, 1921.
'Die Soziologie der Intelligenz und die Intelligenz der Soziologie' [Sociology of the Intelligentsia and the Intelligence of Sociology], Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, vol.4, 1930, pp. 356–75. Reprinted in Hans-Joachim Lieber, ed., Ideologienlehre und Wissenssoziologie, pp. 483–504.
'Dialektik und Sozialdemokratie' [Dialectics and Social Democracy], Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, 1931, pp. 359–75
'Der reaktionäre Idealismus - Die Philosophie des Sozialfaschismus' [Reactionary Idealism: the philosophy of social fascism], Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, Vol. 5, 1931, pp. 214–31
'Krisen-Sozialismus', Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, Vol. 8, 1935.
'Lenins Lehre von der Arbeiteraristokratie und ihre Anwendung auf Fragen der Gegenwart' [Lenin's theory of the labor aristocracy and its application to contemporary questions], Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, Vol. 9, 1935.
Marxizmus és Logica [Marxism and Logic], Budapest: Szikra Publisher, 1946
Logic, 1951. Translated from Hungarian to German by Samuel Szemere as Logik, 1955.[6]
Materializmus és fizikai idealizmus. Budapest, 1952.