Béla Hamvas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Béla Hamvas (23 March 1897–7 November 1968) was a Hungarian writer, philosopher, and social critic. He was the first thinker to introduce the Traditionalist School of René Guénon to Hungary.

Béla Hamvas was born in Prešov (Hung.: Eperjes) into the family of an evangelical pastor. The family moved to Pressburg (now Bratislava, Hung. Pozsony), from where he graduated. Thereafter he entered into voluntary military service and was wounded twice on the front-line in Ukraine. In 1919 his father refused to take the oath of allegiance to Czechoslovakia, therefore the family was expelled from Bratislava and moved to Budapest, where he entered the Péter Pázmány University. He was a journalist at the Budapest Hírlap and the Szózat. In 1937 he married the writer Katalin Kemény. He was called in three times for military service in WWII. In 1945 a bomb hit their apartment; his home, library and manuscripts are destroyed.

In 1948 he was placed on the B-list by the communist regime (i.e. interdiction of publishing) and forced into retirement. Thereafter he was first land laborer in Szentendre, then unskilled worker in a power plant, and simultaneously completed his other works. He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1968.

He was a great thinker and essayist who integrated Eastern and Western traditions as well as exposing many serious questions of the modern age, together with possibilities of resolving them. According to one of his central thoughts: "The present aion, since 600 B.C. stands in the sign of personal salvation. Only since this time is there a notion of humanity, because there is only one single collective category of personality and this is humanity." he was the greatest thinker in 20 century europe