Review article
Personalism and Croatia - On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Mounier's birth
Franjo Zenko
Abstract
The first part of the article gives a short review of life and work of Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), the founder of the journal Esprit, and also provides the genesis of the Personalist movement. In 1927, Mounier took the initiative to establish the journal, later to become the voice of the movement when he had graduated in philosophy in his home town Grenoble in the class of Jacques Chevalier and had moved to Paris for postgraduate studies. He achieved the academic grade of agrégé at the same time as Sartre. After giving up his university career, through his journal he wanted to establish a platform for confronting the realities of the day, primarily the world economic crisis of 1929, which he defined as the »total« crisis of the European individualist civilisation. In the second part of the article, the philosophical and anthropological inspiration of the Personalist movement is outlined and confronted with the three collectivisms, marxist communism, statist fascism and racist nationalism that were presented as solutions to the crises and to the collapse of capitalist world inspired by individualism. In the third part of the article, Mounier's Personalism is presented as an example of a productive resistance to totalitarian structures in the countries where they had for different periods of time succeeded in establishing themselves whether inspired by class, statist, racist or nationalist collectivisms. The presence of Personalism in Croatia is outlined in the fourth part of the article.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
83602
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2005.
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