Thomas Molnar – författare

This series provides a forum for the critical review of enduring issues concerning ethics and society. The text of the debate between Herbert Marcuse and Sir Karl Popper which follows in this volume raises many important issues. The crucial issues between the two participants are (1) their anthropological-axiological positions with respect to the “nature” of man, society, and the practical functions of democracy as a mode of self-government; (2) the conceptions of science and of philosophy which lie behind each thinker’s claims with respect to these; and (3) their respective conceptions of the means required and feasible for attaining their respective social goals. The remarks which follow will attempt to focus upon, and deal critically with, the problems implicit in these three areas.

From its earliest beginnings and through much of its history, the philosophical enterprise has rooted its intellectual procedures in common sense. Ordinary discourse is what the pre-Socratic thinkers did at the dawn of speculation. The same approach was characteristic of the medieval mystics, Pascal in the seventeenth century, and Gaston Bachelard in the twentieth century. However with the ascendency of the physical sciences, mathematics, and depth psychology as influences in contemporary thought, philosophical language and forms of expression became increasingly distant from ordinary language. This created estrangement and confusion in the learner's mind. In Return to Philosophy Thomas Molnar diagnoses the verbal derailment of philosophy and shows how it might be reconnected to the realities of human life.While granting that philosophy must use a somewhat specialized language, Molnar attacks jargon-laden thought by tracing certain root assumptions that go deeper than the issue of language itself. He locates these assumptions in the work of philosophers who, espousing modernity, no longer trust the "reality of the real," and are convinced that the world and our perception of it are elusive, offering no foundation except in the human mind which, however, is also the result of a "social contract," a temporary consensus or transient network of meanings readily discardable. According to changing ideologies and social structures we use "signs" linguistic, psychological, hermeneutical, structuralist, existentialist not to express reality but to establish communication with others. Philosophy, then, shifts from the task of knowing reality to the task of communicating here and now.Return to Philosophy is a unique endeavor. Molnar's book unmasks the modern derailment and shows that many leading philosophers do not so much philosophize, but merely elaborate verbal-technical instruments in what may be little more than trivial language games. This volume will be of interest to philosophers, cultural historians, and sociologists.

This series provides a forum for the critical review of enduring issues concerning ethics and society. The text of the debate between Herbert Marcuse and Sir Karl Popper which follows in this volume raises many important issues. The crucial issues between the two participants are (1) their anthropological-axiological positions with respect to the “nature” of man, society, and the practical functions of democracy as a mode of self-government; (2) the conceptions of science and of philosophy which lie behind each thinker’s claims with respect to these; and (3) their respective conceptions of the means required and feasible for attaining their respective social goals. The remarks which follow will attempt to focus upon, and deal critically with, the problems implicit in these three areas.

In Archetypes of Thought, originally published in 1991 with the title Philosophical Grounds, Thomas Molnar follows seven basic themes of Western philosophical speculation from their development in the earliest times of systematic thought through their evolution through the centuries and civilizations to the present. Some of the themes are origin and its reflection, guilt of being, one and the multiple, the temptation of mechanization, and nocturnal man. The book is neither a chronological treatment of issues nor a list of philosophical schools and movements. Rather, it reaches for the archetypes of philosophical reasoning.Molnar shows the presence of modern themes in the entire history of thinking, traces technology to the first stirrings of rationalism, and evinces modern man's feeling of culpability. Throughout, the soul is perceived as the keeper of God's and man's secret, one which reflects reality and also tries to organize it according to an ontologically implanted rhythm.In his new introduction, Molnar explains and re-examines his reasons for writing the book. While the themes he covers have been widely dealt with in contemporary thought, they are brought together to form an original combination of philosophical concepts. Archetypes of Thought is an intriguing study of the evolution of philosophical thinking. It is essential reading for both students and professionals of philosophy, history, and sociology.

Ideological warfare against authority, especially in the world of higher education, broke out in the 1960s, and continues into the 1990s. No source or symbol of authority escaped untouched neither parents nor teachers nor the cop on the beat. While the hippies have gone underground or disappeared entirely, the assault on legitimate authority continues unabated. As familiar institutions crumble before our eyes, befuddled liberals and conservatives alike throw up their hands in despair. In Authority and Its Enemies, Thomas Molnar asserts that the Western world is reeling from an overdose of freedom without order or authority.

Thomas Molnar's Bernanos is an illuminating study of the personal evolution of the French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos from a reactionary royalist to a religiously principled anti-fascist. It also provides a detailed account of the intellectual divisions within the French Catholic Right and suggests a number of parallels with intellectual and literary figures on the secular and religious left including Zola, Peguy, and Simone Weil. But, as Molnar points out, the significance of Bernanos is not exhausted by his writings. Bernanos the man is as deserving of attention as is Bernanos the novelist, essayist, and social critic.Molnar shows Bernanos against the troubled political-religious background of modern France: the Dreyfus case, the disillusionment following World War I, the Franco regime, Vichy, and the beginnings of the cold war. Whatever touched France touched Bernanos, and he flung himself into each crisis, not armed with a political system nor an academically sanctioned philosophy, but with a peasant's respect for what is and a Christian's sense of what might be. The portrait that Molnar draws is that of a passionately concerned Christian who knows that truth is hard to come by, but who is ready to follow it wherever it leads, regardless of the consequences.A crucial theme covered by Molnar is Bernanos' long and conflicted relations with Charles Maurras and the Action Francaise. He makes clear the extent to which Bernanos' fervent Catholicism set him apart from Maurras whose positivistic inspiration and passion for order helped lay the groundwork for the political collapse that led to the Vichy regime. Thomas Molnar's book is a fascinating account of Georges Bernanos' stature as both a political thinker and an important novelist. Bernanos will be enjoyed by historians, political scientists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of literature.

In perhaps his most famous book, The Decline of the Intellectual, Thomas Molnar launches into a fundamental critique of the intellectual class. He sees it as a group that had lost its way, collapsing a sense of vision into political activism, social engineering, and culture manipulation, and abandoning the writing, philosophizing, and scholarship that had occupied their predecessors. Universities began to produce factory-like, faceless citizens, as the job market became the arbiter of education and culture. Today's professors are recruited from this group of job seekers, and hence, have a shared indifference toward learning.Molnar likens present-day intellectuals to the earlier Marxists who elaborated their Utopian model in the Communist party. The campus intellectuals' objective is to transform the university into a replica and a laboratory of the ideal society. Colleges and universities thus become sources of propaganda of various political, financial, cultural, and ideological trends, not only among students, but professors as well. The thirty years separating editions have done nothing to weaken such a critical appraisal.In his new introduction, Molnar writes that the decline of intellectuals has extended outside of the campus to the arts, the public discourse, and the robotization caused by technology. On the initial publication of this work, Frank S. Meyer wrote in Modern Age, "Thomas Molnar's book is not only true; it is intellectually exciting and it will remain a necessary handbook for anyone interested in the decisive problem of the 20th century." The Decline of the Intellectual is essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, educators, and university officials. It is the basis of present-day critiques of the academic world.

From its earliest beginnings and through much of its history, the philosophical enterprise has rooted its intellectual procedures in common sense. Ordinary discourse is what the pre-Socratic thinkers did at the dawn of speculation. The same approach was characteristic of the medieval mystics, Pascal in the seventeenth century, and Gaston Bachelard in the twentieth century. However with the ascendency of the physical sciences, mathematics, and depth psychology as influences in contemporary thought, philosophical language and forms of expression became increasingly distant from ordinary language. This created estrangement and confusion in the learner's mind. In Return to Philosophy Thomas Molnar diagnoses the verbal derailment of philosophy and shows how it might be reconnected to the realities of human life.While granting that philosophy must use a somewhat specialized language, Molnar attacks jargon-laden thought by tracing certain root assumptions that go deeper than the issue of language itself. He locates these assumptions in the work of philosophers who, espousing modernity, no longer trust the "reality of the real," and are convinced that the world and our perception of it are elusive, offering no foundation except in the human mind which, however, is also the result of a "social contract," a temporary consensus or transient network of meanings readily discardable. According to changing ideologies and social structures we use "signs" linguistic, psychological, hermeneutical, structuralist, existentialist not to express reality but to establish communication with others. Philosophy, then, shifts from the task of knowing reality to the task of communicating here and now.Return to Philosophy is a unique endeavor. Molnar's book unmasks the modern derailment and shows that many leading philosophers do not so much philosophize, but merely elaborate verbal-technical instruments in what may be little more than trivial language games. This volume will be of interest to philosophers, cultural historians, and sociologists.

Written simply yet comprehensively, Molnar's anlaysis of the history of philosophy and false mysticism leads him to conclude that a return to a moderate realism will save the philosophical enterprise from a series of epistemological and societal absolutes that are embodied in contemporary rationalism and mysticism alike. Issues that have been systematically excluded from discourse will have to be reintroduced into the discussion of person and providence.Molnar divided the philosophical systems into two groups according to their vision of God, and consequently of reality.One group removes God from the human scope, therefore rendering the world unreal, unknowable, and meaningless. The second group holds that God is immanent in the human soul, thereby emphasizing the human attainment of divine status, and reducing the extra-mental world to a condition of utter imperfection. Either way, the result is a pseudo-mysticism, a denial of the creaturely status of human beings.What is most needed, Molnar claims, is a theory of knowledge whose ideal is not fusion but distinction—between God and Man, subject and object, the self and the society. By thus raising the question of philosophy over against magic Molnar seeks to awaken the reader from neo-dogmatic assumptions and restore speculative thought to its traditional place. Upon publication, Dale Vree in The Review of Politic^, said that "this book will go a long way in establishing Professor Molnar as one of the distinguished conservative philosophers of our time."

In perhaps his most famous book, The Decline of the Intellectual, Thomas Molnar launches into a fundamental critique of the intellectual class. He sees it as a group that had lost its way, collapsing a sense of vision into political activism, social engineering, and culture manipulation, and abandoning the writing, philosophizing, and scholarship that had occupied their predecessors. Universities began to produce factory-like, faceless citizens, as the job market became the arbiter of education and culture. Today's professors are recruited from this group of job seekers, and hence, have a shared indifference toward learning.Molnar likens present-day intellectuals to the earlier Marxists who elaborated their Utopian model in the Communist party. The campus intellectuals' objective is to transform the university into a replica and a laboratory of the ideal society. Colleges and universities thus become sources of propaganda of various political, financial, cultural, and ideological trends, not only among students, but professors as well. The thirty years separating editions have done nothing to weaken such a critical appraisal.In his new introduction, Molnar writes that the decline of intellectuals has extended outside of the campus to the arts, the public discourse, and the robotization caused by technology. On the initial publication of this work, Frank S. Meyer wrote in Modern Age, "Thomas Molnar's book is not only true; it is intellectually exciting and it will remain a necessary handbook for anyone interested in the decisive problem of the 20th century." The Decline of the Intellectual is essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, educators, and university officials. It is the basis of present-day critiques of the academic world.

Ideological warfare against authority, especially in the world of higher education, broke out in the 1960s, and continues into the 1990s. No source or symbol of authority escaped untouched—neither parents nor teachers nor the cop on the beat. While the hippies have gone underground or disappeared entirely, the assault on legitimate authority continues unabated. As familiar institutions crumble before our eyes, befuddled liberals and conservatives alike throw up their hands in despair. In Authority and Its Enemies, Thomas Molnar asserts that the Western world is reeling from an overdose of freedom without order or authority.

In Archetypes of Thought, originally published in 1991 with the title Philosophical Grounds, Thomas Molnar follows seven basic themes of Western philosophical speculation from their development in the earliest times of systematic thought through their evolution through the centuries and civilizations to the present. Some of the themes are origin and its reflection, guilt of being, one and the multiple, the temptation of mechanization, and nocturnal man. The book is neither a chronological treatment of issues nor a list of philosophical schools and movements. Rather, it reaches for the archetypes of philosophical reasoning.Molnar shows the presence of modern themes in the entire history of thinking, traces technology to the first stirrings of rationalism, and evinces modern man's feeling of culpability. Throughout, the soul is perceived as the keeper of God's and man's secret, one which reflects reality and also tries to organize it according to an ontologically implanted rhythm.In his new introduction, Molnar explains and re-examines his reasons for writing the book. While the themes he covers have been widely dealt with in contemporary thought, they are brought together to form an original combination of philosophical concepts. Archetypes of Thought is an intriguing study of the evolution of philosophical thinking. It is essential reading for both students and professionals of philosophy, history, and sociology.

Thomas Molnar's Bernanos is an illuminating study of the personal evolution of the French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos from a reactionary royalist to a religiously principled anti-fascist. It also provides a detailed account of the intellectual divisions within the French Catholic Right and suggests a number of parallels with intellectual and literary figures on the secular and religious left including Zola, Peguy, and Simone Weil. But, as Molnar points out, the significance of Bernanos is not exhausted by his writings. Bernanos the man is as deserving of attention as is Bernanos the novelist, essayist, and social critic.Molnar shows Bernanos against the troubled political-religious background of modern France: the Dreyfus case, the disillusionment following World War I, the Franco regime, Vichy, and the beginnings of the cold war. Whatever touched France touched Bernanos, and he flung himself into each crisis, not armed with a political system nor an academically sanctioned philosophy, but with a peasant's respect for what is and a Christian's sense of what might be. The portrait that Molnar draws is that of a passionately concerned Christian who knows that truth is hard to come by, but who is ready to follow it wherever it leads, regardless of the consequences.A crucial theme covered by Molnar is Bernanos' long and conflicted relations with Charles Maurras and the Action Francaise. He makes clear the extent to which Bernanos' fervent Catholicism set him apart from Maurras whose positivistic inspiration and passion for order helped lay the groundwork for the political collapse that led to the Vichy regime. Thomas Molnar's book is a fascinating account of Georges Bernanos' stature as both a political thinker and an important novelist. Bernanos will be enjoyed by historians, political scientists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of literature.