Fragments of Ideas Concerning Cultural Criticism in Imre Madách’s Essay The mutual Influence between Aesthetics and Society

Abstract

The complexity of Imre Madách’s intellectual personality is shown by the fact that he was simultaneously a lawyer, a liberal politician, an orator, a creative artist and a thinker who maintained distance from faith in progress of modernity and adapted an aestheticizing perspective. Our study focuses on the latter aspect of his roles.

The guiding principle of our approach is the perspective of cultural criticism, which can be found in not only Madách’s most famous work, the dramatic poem The Tragedy of Man, but also in his less frequently referred treatises. This intellectual tendency is very prominently present in the text The Mutual Influence between Aesthetics and Society.

The study – taking into account examples and parallels from the history of philosophy and ideas – presents in detail how the various dimensions of aesthetic-based worldview, ethical perspective and social criticism intertwine in essayist Madách’s conservative-tinged interpretation of culture.

According to the conclusion of the study the contradictions in Madách’s multifaceted intellectual personality can be resolved on the basis of the concept of “mediation”. This moment clearly refers to the higher-level unity of life path, worldview and oeuvre.