The Quest for Unity in a Time of Crisis: Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenges of Political Modernity in Interwar Lithuania
The dissertation explores the relationship between religion and modernity as it was imagined by a circle of Lithuanian Catholic intellectuals. It follows the rise and fall of the so-called philosophy of culture (Kulturphilosophie), a discipline that was popular among Lithuanian Catholic thinkers during the interwar period, focusing on the period of the 1930s. By tracing the lives and thought of Catholic intellectuals, the thesis investigates how various trends within Catholicism, Neo-Scholasticism, corporatist social thought, conservative ideologies, and Lithuanian nationalism interacted with each other. In reconstructing the thought of these intellectuals, the thesis pays particular attention to how Lithuanian Catholic thinkers responded to the changing circumstances of international politics and the challenges of political modernity. Invented by Lithuanian Catholic philosophers as a theoretical framework to reflect on modernity, philosophy of culture was tasked to reconcile religion and the modern world, and to find a version of modernity devoid of the destructive impact of modernization.
Examination committee:
Jean-Louis Fabiani - chair (Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, CEU)
Balasz Trencsenyi – supervisor (Department of History, CEU)
Matthias Riedl – internal member (Department of History, CEU)
Patrick Pasture – external member (KU Leuven)
Piotr Kosicki – external reader (University of Maryland)
The doctoral defense will take place online for the audience.
The doctoral dissertation is available for inspection.
For further information, please contact Margaretha Boockmann (BoockmannM@ceu.edu)