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| Bild från Hungary Today |
För bättre förståelse, läs vad Politico skriver i ämnet här under rubriken A philosopher’s death and the two realities of Orbán’s Hungary.
1948 Cluj/Kolozsvár – 2023 Budapest
Professor G.M. Tamás, Gazsi, passed away on January 15, 2023. He was with us from the very beginning, 2003-2004. Trained as a philosopher, he taught his "Class on Class", and later Critical Theory, to generations of students at the department. We'll remember his watchful gaze, uncompromising intellect, theoretical and linguistic precision and wit, which he applied in his teaching just as much as in his analytically sharp and compassionate writings on contemporary society.
The cold brutality of the world remains, but we, especially, we Hungarians, Romanians, and other CEU citizens have lost one of its most brilliant interpreters and critics. We only stutter without him.
Professor Tamás graduated from Babes-Bolyai University, in 1972. He originally has studied philosophy and classics. After a stint as an assistant editor of a literary weekly in his native Transylvania, he got into political difficulties with the authorities of the time, emigrated to Hungary where he taught at the University of Budapest (ELTE). Sacked for political reasons again, he became known as a dissident intellectual and published only in the underground or abroad.
Elected as a liberal member of the Hungarian Parliament in 1989, he quit professional politics in 1994. He was the head of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy and has taught at Columbia, Oxford, Chicago, Georgetown, Yale and other universities and was a visiting research fellow in Paris, Vienna, Washington DC and Berlin. He was granted the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Soros Foundation Hungary. He published books on political philosophy and social theory. His works have been translated into 12 languages.
Och här, avslutningsvis, ur Politico:
To some, Tamás was a brother in dissent from the 1980s in Budapest, when he was active in an underground democracy movement. To a younger generation, the Transylvanian-born Marxist thinker and academic was also a beloved speaker at protests and events, where he excoriated Orbán.
(…)
The Hungarian leader was once himself a liberal dissident, moving in the same circles as Tamás, before tacking hard to the nationalist right.
That’s why Tamás’ passing inadvertently pierced this growing chasm when Orbán posted a photo of the late intellectual on Facebook, paying respects to his (ex) friend.
“The old freedom fighter has gone,” the prime minister wrote, referring to Tamás as simply TGM — the writer’s ubiquitous byline.
(…)
Who, asked some of the prime minister’s supporters in the comments section, is TGM? Can someone explain?
Others were confused why Orbán was suddenly honoring someone so ideologically opposed to his government. Some offered their condolences anyway.
Tamás’ fans, meanwhile, were outraged. How dare Orbán, whose government vilifies critics as traitors on a daily basis, post about their beloved philosopher as an “old” fighter?
