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Petre Țuțea

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Petre Ţuţea (October 6 1902 - December 3 1991) was a Romanian philosopher,journalist and economist.

Biography

Early years: from Marxism to the Legionary Movement

Ţuţea was born in the village of Boteni, Muscel region (now in Argeş County). His father, Petre Bădescu, was a Romanian Orthodox priest and his mother, Ana Ţuţea, was of peasant stock. His parents died when he was 9 and he was adopted by a military unit in Câmpulung, the officers of which noticed his intelligence and decided to send him to study at the Câmpulung high school and then law at he University of Cluj. After graduating, he continued studying and obtained a PhD in Administrative Law, also at the University of Cluj.[1]

He moved to Bucharest and in 1932, he founded, together with Petre Pandrea[2], a leftist newspaper, "Stânga" ("The Left")[3], that was quickly and forcefully closed by the government. An anecdote, allegedly by Emil Cioran, says that Ţuţea went to a newspaper stands and bought the Soviet Pravda newspaper despite not being able to read Russian, but instead, he kissed it, showing his love for the Marxist ideology.[4] Nevertheless, later in life, he would change his political views, departing from the Marxist ideology[5] and changing his religious views from atheism to become a devout Orthodox Christian.[1]

In 1935 Ţuţea and four other writers published a nationalist program of economic and social development, "Manifestul revoluţiei naţionale" ("Manifesto for a National Revolution").[3] Around the same time he met the influential philosopher Nae Ionescu and wrote for his famous newspaper "Cuvântul" along with Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Radu Gyr, Mircea Vulcănescu, Mihail Sebastian and other known writers.

Ţuţea was a member of the Criterion literary society and, like many other fellow members, became a sympathizer of the Iron Guard, a right-wing, ultra-nationalist organization[6], although he was not its member. He considered that at the time that democracy would have not guaranteed the sovereignty of the Romanian people.[2] He also notes that most great personalities in Romania at the time had supported the Legionnaires, because "there were only radical positions against the harmful influence of Russia Bolshevism", which Ţuţea claimed that it was "controlled by the Jews" (see Judeo-Bolshevism).[2] Speaking of the Iron Guard, he notes that the main difference between it and Fascism and National Socialism was that it was a Christian movement, unlike the others, which were secular.[2]

Between 1936 and 1939, he was a director in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, being in charge with the Office of Economics Publications and Propaganda, after which, he was a director of the research office in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. As the National Legionary State was proclaimed in 1940, he was a member of the Romanian economic delegation to Moscow.[7]

As the war against the Soviet Union began, he asked to be sent to the front, but being refused, he worked as a director in the Ministry of War Economy and after August 23, 1944, a director of studies in the Ministry of National Economy.[7]

Communist era

Ţuţea was arrested by the Communist regime in 1949 without an trial, being accused of being an Anglo-American spy and was sent, without a trial, to re-education at Ocnele Mari.[8] He was released in 1953 and, unable to find work, he lived with some friends.[8] Arrested again in 1956, he was tried and sentenced for "Conspiracy against the State"[5] (a standard accusation thrown at Anti-Communists) to 18 years of hard labor, of which he served 8 years in various prisons, ending up in the infamous Aiud prison.

After the release of all political prisoners in 1964, Petre Ţuţea became famous as a Socratic type of philosopher. He also started to write books and essays, created an original dramatic form, "Theater as Seminar" and produced a philosophical manifesto, "The Philosophy of Nuances" (1969). Due to censorship very little of his work could be published and virtually nothing appeared after 1972. Under permanent observation, Ţuţea had many of his manuscripts confiscated by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate. In the late 1980s he started working on a massive unfinished project in five volumes, "Man, a Christian Treatise of Anthropology".

After the 1989 revolution

After the 1989 Romanian Revolution, Ţuţea was embraced by Romanian intellectuals,[5] receiving frequent requests from journalists and TV crews for interviews while living for one year with a student in theology, Radu Preda. During the last year of his life, Ţuţea was interned in a Christian hospice, "Christiana", where he passed away of old age, without seeing any of his books published.

His most popular book (sold in more than 70,000 copies) is 322 de vorbe memorabile, a collection of aphorisms in which he exposes his views about various topics. He generally adopts a hardline Orthodox Christian point-of-view, being critical of various groups, including atheists (whom he names "weasels"), communists (naming communism a "social cancer") and Jews (whom he finds responsible for the existence of Anti-Semitism).[9]

Bibliography

  • Între D-zeu şi neamul meu ("Between God and my Nation" - an early, fragmentary, very popular collection of interviews. Also contains unreliable editions of various essays)
  • 322 de vorbe memorabile ("322 Memorable Words", a collection of aphorisms collected from interviews, alphabetically ordered by the editor)
  • Filozofia nuanţelor: Eseuri, Portrete, Corespondenţă ("The Philosophy of Nuances, with other Essays, Portraits and Correspondence)
  • Aurel-Dragoş Munteanu (a book written in 1972 about the Romanian writer who was one of Ţuţea's best friends, later became a famous dissident and diplomat)
  • Mircea Eliade (book about Eliade's scholarly, artistic and religious outlook)
  • Reflecţii religioase asupra cunoaşterii ("Religious Reflections Upon Knowledge", a book on Plato's philosophy seen from a religious point of view)
  • Lumea ca Teatru: Teatrul Seminar (World as Theatre: Theatre as Seminar)
  • Omul; Tratat de antropologie creştină (Man: A Treatise of Christian Anthropology - an unfinished project of five volumes, of which the first two are published here: I. Problems, or The Book of Questions; II. Systems or The Books of Logical Wholes - Mathematical and Autonomous, Parallel to Ontic Wholes)

Notes

  1. ^ a b ""Fara Dumnezeu omul devine un animal rational, care vine de nicaieri si merge spre nicaieri", Ziua, August 2, 2000]
  2. ^ a b c d Petre Ţuţea, Între Dumnezeu şi Neamul meu, Fundaţia Anastasia, Bucharest, 1992
  3. ^ a b Popescu, p. xxii
  4. ^ "Rusia, «cealaltă» Europă - interviu cu Georges NIVAT", Dilema Veche
  5. ^ a b c Eric Gilder, Review: "Petre Tutea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide", Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2008
  6. ^ Marta Petreu, An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher; 2005; ISBN 1566636078 p.60
  7. ^ a b Popescu, p. xxiii
  8. ^ a b Popescu, p. xxiv
  9. ^ 322 de vorbe memorabile ale lui Petre Ţuţea, Editura Humanitas Bucharest, 1997

References

  • Alexandru Daniel Popescu, "Petre Ţuţea between sacrifice and suicide", Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2004 ISBN 0754650065
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