1. Introduction
Tamás Molnár was an historian of ideas, philosopher, political thinker and public commentator. In his more than 1500 publications, he has written on all these aspects. In addition to his published works, books and newspaper articles, two of his works survive in manuscript: the rough draft of his autobiography, which he dictated before his death; and a French-language essay from the mid-1990s on a critique of the ‘American way of life’. These are in the process of being edited.
Molnár’s career unfolded on the borderland between university-based academic philosophy and the extra-academic forums of intellectually formative, movement-oriented cultural awakening. His dissertation and earliest works were still written with the degree of meticulous detail expected within the university world. Yet the success of his publicistic writing – through which he soon gained national renown and subsequently international recognition – quickly left its mark on his books as well: his writings increasingly bore the stylistic features of the creative artist, and alongside the apt formulation of particular insights and ideas, less attention was devoted to the painstaking elaboration of arguments and the thorough examination of counter-arguments. Molnár gradually exchanged the role of historian of ideas and analytical scholar for that of the existential thinker, and the focal point of his writings increasingly became stylistic expressiveness and vivid, forthright articulation.
This mode of writing adopted by Molnár follows the genre of the philosophical essay; and although many expressed themselves in a similar manner, his style of formulation remained singular and distinctive throughout his life. The same was true of his personal presence: according to eyewitnesses, at conferences and round-table discussions he invariably gave the impression of being an outsider. In America he appeared European, in Europe American, and to those familiar with both worlds he seemed impossible to classify. Only those who had seen him on the estate of his friends in the south of France or in his house in Spain could know that it was in these regions that Molnár truly felt at home. Aristocratic, reclusive, reserved, and – with his walking stick, leather cigarette case, Asian profile and measured demeanour – he gave the impression of an extraordinary personality. His circle in Hungary consisted chiefly of writers and artists; and it was thus that he could, as a thinker, become a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
2. The Intellectual Background
If we wish to understand the intellectual impulses that shaped Molnár, we must begin first and foremost with the œuvre of Georges Bernanos (1888–1948). Secondly, we must examine the substance, orientations, and leading figures of American conservatism. We must also consider the conception of the state embodied in the Hungarian historical constitution. Finally, we must consider the defining ideological and historical events of the twentieth century: the rule of ideologies, the world wars, the cultural disintegration of Europe, Soviet world domination and its dismantling, and, not least, the transformation of Christianity over the same period.
Bernanos was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century French literature, whose merits as a novelist are beyond dispute. “He possessed a genius for constructing plots often reminiscent of detective fiction; his visionary power and his longing for grace align him with Dostoevsky” (György Gera). In Bernanos, great novelistic creativity and a sharply defined worldview are inextricably intertwined. He was a believing Christian and a Catholic, yet at the same time one of the most incisive critics of his own Church; a committed French patriot who not only castigated the Vichy regime, but also the French people for their spiritual vacuity, indifference, and accommodation to the temptations of technology, the totalitarianism of mechanised civilisation, the pursuit of pleasure-offering utopias, and the abandonment of truth, inwardness, and pathos in religion. Politically, Bernanos was a follower of de Gaulle, although in his youth he had been tempted by the French far right. Yet just as the Spanish Civil War disillusioned George Orwell with the promises of communism, so the atrocities he witnessed shattered, for Bernanos, the glass sphere of the Falangist regime. Even so, he remained an advocate and proponent of authority, of strong leadership, and of traditional morality. His most celebrated novels – such as Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan / The Star of Satan) – as well as his public writings, addresses, and interventions all bear witness to this.
While writing his dissertation and later preparing his book, Molnár familiarised himself thoroughly with Bernanos’s outlook and recognised the intellectual kinship between them. This is not to suggest that Molnár ever aspired to the laurels of a novelist; rather, his distinctive mode of writing – his essayistic manner of expression – provided a framework within which he could situate those elements of Bernanos’s thought that he found compelling, and within which he could adopt the horizon of Bernanos’s conceptual world. It is not that either Bernanos or Molnár yearned for a return to the ‘Middle Ages’ – both were well aware that the Romantic idealisation of the medieval world had never truly existed. It is, instead, that both adhered to the principal lines of the enduring philosophical and moral conceptions transmitted through Christianity, and assessed the developments of their own age through this lens. Given that these developments were, and have remained, of the most extreme kind, their critiques were correspondingly forceful and at times strikingly sharp. They directed their criticism not only at Falangism or National Socialism, but equally at communism and at unrestrained, utopian liberalism. To what they appealed was the human person and its natural communities, the indubitable reality of transcendence, and the intelligible coherence of history – secured by the organic continuity, renewal and careful cultivation of tradition. Politically, Molnár followed Bernanos also in his conviction of the primary importance of state order. By this he did not mean totalitarian repression – of which he was an avowed opponent – but the physical, legal, economic, political and spiritual–moral order of both the individual and the community. Without such order, a high culture cannot exist; and chaotic systems such as extreme liberalism or anarchistic communism – both then and now – do not serve the further progress of history, nor do they constitute development, but rather disintegration and decline.
Molnár was the author of the first monograph on Bernanos in the United States, and – as his biography also records – his encounters with Frederick Wilhelmsen and Sister Helen Casey led him into the circles of a renewing American Catholicism. Wilhelmsen had been a student of Étienne Gilson, a connection that resonated with the Francophile erudition of Molnár himself. Wilhelmsen later became one of the founders of Christendom College and served as professor of philosophy and political science at the University of Dallas. He regarded Gilsonian neo-Thomism as the principal avenue for the renewal of Catholic thought. Molnár was not a neo-Thomist, though he was familiar with neo-Thomism; nor was he a follower of Gilson, although he attended the master’s lectures on several occasions. Molnár pursued his own path, one that, rather than focusing on narrowly defined philosophical questions, sought to explore the essence of the community as a political whole as it takes shape in the course of history. Yet without Wilhelmsen’s friendship, Molnár would not have gained access to the inner circles of the conservative revival, would not have been introduced to Russell Kirk, would not have joined the creative contributors to Modern Age, and would not have attained national prominence as an author, editor, and lecturer.
At this point, then, we must turn to Kirk, for his close, almost familial friendship with Molnár endured for more than three decades. Their friendship was so close that in 1962 they set out together on a months-long journey through Africa, and even as married men, they remained in close relationship that extended well beyond the professional sphere. Kirk soon became one of the most respected figures of the conservative movement and supported Molnár’s career in every possible way. For his part, Molnár repaid this assistance through numerous publications and reviews. Kirk also wrote the preface to Molnár’s book The Future of Education; moreover, it was Kirk who helped Molnár become a contributor to the National Review, founded by William Buckley and his associates. In this capacity, as G. H. Nash has pointed out, Molnár became an influential figure within one of the emerging branches of American conservatism.
A significant shift in Molnár’s career was brought about by his journalistic and authorial success in France. In 1969 his work Sartre, philosophe de la contestation (lit. Sartre, the Quarrelsome Philosopher) appeared in Paris and received considerable attention from various quarters of French intellectual life. Naturally, it was above all conservatives who welcomed Molnár, and it was before them that this book secured his standing. Molnár spent increasing amounts of time in France and participated actively in its intellectual milieu, a development that led him to distance himself from the principal currents of American conservatism. Following the founding of Triumph in 1966, he contributed to this traditionalist magazine for several years, as did many figures from the Anglo-American conservative movement – among them John Crosby, Christopher Dawson, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Russell Kirk, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and John Lukacs. By the late 1960s Molnár found the editors’ adversarial stance towards virtually everything increasingly unrealistic. In his autobiography he writes of Brent Bozell and his associates with a certain irony, and he did not share their more extreme convictions. Molnár was too aristocratic in temperament for this traditionalist movement; and his gradual estrangement from it also signalled his distancing from the main tendencies of American conservatism.
By the late 1970s Molnár was once again seeking his proper place; through his wife, Ildikó, he entered into closer contact with the Hungarian émigré community in the United States and participated in the preparations for the return of the Hungarian Holy Crown. In this connection he gained a deeper understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Crown and revived his knowledge of the Hungarian historical constitution. It became clear to him – as he explained in private conversations – that his conception of the state was closest to a legitimate, monarchic form grounded in religious and moral traditions, a form that imposes duties as well as rights upon its citizens and situates all of this within a historically unified and enduring framework. The foundation of society is not ‘the people’ but legitimate tradition, to which several peoples may belong, and which together constitute the nation that forms the state. Molnár regarded the Holy Crown as a rare historical relic that demonstrates the state-building and nation-forming force of the Hungarian people.
Finally, Molnár's intellectual background is defined by the extraordinary events that humanity has witnessed during the 20th century. This century witnessed the disintegration of the traditional European value system, particularly in France before the First World War; the attempt to renew the European value system failed in the Great War, which brought about the 'twilight of the West'. During the same period, Christianity was at first militantly opposed to modernism, but after the World War it became increasingly open. This undoubtedly led to a loss of faith, which the great social utopias such as communism, fascism and national or international socialism sought to fill. During the century, these ideologies failed economically, politically and militarily, but this fate, according to Molnár, was only temporary and did not reach the ideology of extreme liberalism.
Molnár saw in these changes a confirmation of his own, Bernanos-inspired critique of utopian schemes and ideologies. It would, however, be misleading not to recognise that he approached individual phenomena in their complexity: he did not deny that either communist or fascist regimes possessed certain advantageous features. For example, in contrast to the Western consumerist, acquisitive society, he judged the planned economies and relatively modest levels of consumption in the former socialist states as preferable; and, based on his conversations in New York, he did not fail to acknowledge the merits of experts such as Heinz Gurian, the father of German armoured warfare, whose assistance was instrumental in reorganising the West German army after 1945.
The most significant intellectual shift in Molnár’s life came with the Second Vatican Council. As a traditionalist Catholic, he long wrestled with assessing the Council’s essential reforms, with particular attention to liturgical changes, attitudes toward other religions, and transformations affecting political philosophy – especially the new stance toward existing socialism that emerged in the second half of the 1960s, most vividly illustrated by the dramatic story of Cardinal Mindszenty and his deprivation of title. Unlike the editors and some contributors to Triumph, Molnár ultimately reconciled himself to these changes, though this reconciliation simultaneously tempered his previous momentum and confident outlook, leading him closer to the deeper questions of mysticism and philosophical theology. At this juncture, his engagement with Eric Voegelin and Mircea Eliade proved particularly important: he studied their works thoroughly and frequently engaged with them critically, commenting on their ideas in dialogue with his own thinking.
Molnár considered the disintegration of the Soviet system in Europe inevitable but cautioned against excessive hopes about the nature of the European Union. Molnár viewed this political grouping with some suspicion; he was convinced that the Union would not bring about the hoped-for positive changes in the economy, society and, not least, morality of a country; on the contrary, it would weaken these states, which, despite its promises, it would not be able to replace with higher, stronger structures. Molnár's criticisms of the United States have also grown stronger over the years; in his view, the reconciliation with communism has ultimately shown the weakness of the US and the reciprocity of the disadvantages of these regimes. He considered history to be a meaningful process, but he was convinced that humanity could only emerge from its present, in many ways distorted, situation if it suffered great shocks; he considered these changes to be quite imminent. Like his master, Bernanos, Molnár was drawn to the genre of political prophecy, and interestingly his minor predictions came true with remarkable accuracy. One example will suffice: for reasons of economic history, Molnár had already whipped the euro, the common European currency, into shape at the time of its introduction, and made it clear that soon no state would have confidence in it. "The euro is a symbol of betrayal." (Me, Symmachus)
3. The Oeuvre
Molnár published a total of forty-four books, among which his study on Bernanos holds pioneering significance. The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) represents a foundational and identity-defining work for the emerging New American Conservatism. Following this work, Molnár’s publications can be categorised along three principal lines: (1) books addressing contemporary public affairs, (2) books on the theme of utopia, and (3) works of philosophical and metaphysical concern.
Within the first category of books on contemporary public affairs, Molnár published on the topic of education (The Future of Education, with a foreword by R. Kirk, 1961), on American politics (The Two Faces of American Foreign Policy, 1962; The American Dilemma, 1971; L’Américanologie, 1991), and on European issues (The European Dilemma, 1974; L’Europe entre parenthèses, 1990; The Emerging Atlantic Culture, 1994). Several publications engaged with the transformation of the Church following the Second Vatican Council (Ecumenism or New Reformation?, 1968; Christian Humanism – A Critique of the Secular City and Its Ideology, 1978; Politics and the State – The Catholic View, 1980; The Pagan Temptation, 1987; The Church, Pilgrim of Centuries, 1990). He also addressed issues relating to the Third World and Africa, frequently in a personal or travelogue style (Africa: A Political Travelogue, 1965; South West Africa. The Last Pioneer Country, 1966; Tiers-Monde; Ideologie, Realité, 1982).
The theme of utopia represents a central focus of Molnár’s oeuvre, around which his entire body of work can be mapped, as his first book already articulates the core elements of his later critique. Molnár’s principal thesis is that modernity is the product of a utopian mentality. Within this framework, works written from a historical-theoretical perspective can be distinguished from his critical analyses of the contemporary ‘left’. Notable and often influential writings in the former category include Utopia, The Perennial Heresy (1967), The Counter-Revolution (1969), La gauche vue d’en face (1970), Authority and its Enemies (1976), Lo stato debole (1978), Le modèle défiguré (1978), and L’Hégémonie libérale (1992). More topical works include Sartre: Ideologue of Our Time (1968), Le socialisme sans visage (1976), and Du mal moderne – Symptômes et antidotes (1996).
Molnár’s works on philosophical and metaphysical themes are equally diverse. Some rise from contemporary questions of political philosophy to generalisation (Bernanos, His Political Thought and Prophecy, 1960; The Decline of the Intellectual, 1961; L’éclipse du sacré, 1986; Twin Powers – Politics and the Sacred, 1988; Igazság és történelem (lit. Truth and History), 2000). Others begin from universal problems themselves (God and the Knowledge of Reality, 1973; Theists and Atheists, 1980; Le Dieu immanent, 1982; Philosophical Grounds, 1991; Archetypes of Thought, 1996; Return to Philosophy, 1996). Still others are autobiographical in nature (Moi, Symmaque & L’Âme et la machine, 1996; Századvégi mérleg (lit. A Balance at the Century’s End), 1999; L’American Way of Life, unpublished manuscript).
A survey of Molnár’s works immediately demonstrates that his books, first published in various languages, transcend national boundaries: they were written in English, French, Italian, and Hungarian. Many of his most important works have been translated into numerous languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian. It is worth noting that several of his French-language books were never published in English. Naturally, his works in different languages contain Molnár’s recurring ideas, but they are always framed by the cultural and linguistic context in which they were composed. Reading these works also reveals that Molnár operated most confidently and comfortably within the second category mentioned above: when he argued, from the perspective of contemporary political and public affairs, in favour of higher, more general principles. His philosophical and metaphysical writings offer a distilled form of this approach, often remaining at the level of typification and generalisation – a point on which Voegelin offered critical commentary in their correspondence. Of particular interest, and of documentary value, are those writings in which Molnár intertwines biographical detail with general or typical observations.
Molnár’s central theme is the critique of utopianism. In this, he drew on his extensive knowledge of Western, and especially French, intellectual history. Among his works on the subject, the most interesting and unique is Utopia, The Perennial Heresy, while the most influential on the American conservative movement is The Counter-Revolution. While the former provides a singular overview of the utopian tradition, the latter had a direct impact on figures such as Irving Kristol, widely regarded as the father of neoconservatism (see, in particular, Kristol: Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea). Although Kristol does not explicitly cite Molnár, his terminology, certain sentences, and conceptual approaches clearly show the influence of The Counter-Revolution. In this way, Molnár emerges not only as a significant author within the Old Right but also as a formative influence on the intellectual foundations of neoconservatism. Molnár’s critique of utopianism is so clear and straightforward that it could not be ignored: it applied equally to existing socialism and to advocates of the ‘American Dream’; to Marxist bias as well as to the dogmas of liberal milieus, against which the intellectual front of conservatism had solidified by the late 1970s.
Molnár’s French-language publications attracted significant attention, although they did not succeed in breaking the left-leaning dogmatism of the intellectual milieu. Nevertheless, his works remain highly valuable today, as the doctrines he criticised continue to constitute, in many respects, a kind of consensus. In Hungary, Croatia, Poland, and Romania, Molnár’s books were read within the framework of local Central European conservatism; as a result, their impact in these contexts was both deeper and more thorough.
Molnár’s overarching intellectual framework is termed Perennialism. According to this view, the questions of history, society, politics, and morality are determined by eternal, perennial necessities. While it is possible to deviate from them temporarily, certain civilizations, particularly during periods of disintegration, diverge most markedly. Yet the restoration of order is inevitable: eternal values must be rediscovered, reapplied, and elaborated through the tools of reason, and enacted in both public and private life. Molnár argues that the collapse of Western civilisation began and culminated under the banner of ‘liberalism.’ In this process, no genuinely new values emerge, nor do new, fundamental insights arise. Rather, distorted versions – or ‘heresies’ – of previous truths come to the fore and dominate during periods of societal agony. Advocates of liberalism hail these developments as novel, despite their merely exaggerated historical precedents. Ideologies, in attempting to fill the vacuum left by collapsed order, are inevitably doomed to fail because they cannot conform to the necessities imposed by eternal, perennial realities. They turn away from God, disregard fundamental moral imperatives, and impose voluntarism, arbitrariness, and tyranny within the spheres of the individual, family, community, and international relations. Even ideologies that profess to restore the old order – such as Spanish Falangism or Romania’s Iron Guard – cannot escape their fate; the collapse is even more pronounced in the case of fascism, national and international socialism. Molnár, acting as a prophetic observer, places extreme liberalism in the same category, since it is even less capable of establishing order in accordance with eternal realities within the individual, family, and society.
The modern obsession with machinery represents the technical expression of this societal disintegration. Although many of its principles were already understood by the ancient Greeks, by the end of this period the machine becomes dominant, displacing living human initiative, judgement, and activity, and destroying the natural world. Mechanisation, in Molnár’s view, is not a civilisational achievement but a symptom of disintegration. In this respect, he aligns with the strand of conservatism that has opposed mechanisation, from early socialism to certain representatives of the counterculture of the 1960s.
Molnár’s most important positive message concerns the inevitability of restoring order, whether in individual morality or in the life of small and large communities. Order serves as the counterpoint to the mechanised, irreconcilable chaos of modernity. Its foundation lies in personal authority and recognised merit, which must rest exclusively upon individual achievement in accordance with eternal realities. Authority is both the result of personal merit and the expression of tradition realised through individual accomplishment. Without tradition, authority degenerates into arbitrariness; without individual achievement, tradition becomes mere bureaucracy and soulless formalism. The philosopher’s role, Molnár maintains, is to advocate for the importance of order grounded in eternal truths: to argue for the significance of authority; to deliver a strong, prophetic critique of disintegrative processes; to provide a moral example against chaos; and to defend the individual, family, and community against prevailing inhumanity. History, he contends, ultimately vindicates the person guided by tradition, though such vindication may come at the cost of catastrophe – especially in contemporary modernity, which has progressed further along the path of disintegration than any precedent.
4. I, Symmachus: The Loneliness of Tamás Molnár
With the briefly outlined intellectual framework, Tamás Molnár emerges as one of the great, solitary creators of our time. He occupies a position akin to that of Bernanos within French intellectual life, Unamuno among the Spaniards, Russell Kirk in American conservatism, Ernst Jünger in Germany, or Béla Hamvas in Hungarian culture. While he always had friends, intellectual companions were few and only for short periods. This solitude left its mark on his oeuvre, which, until the late 1970s, held the promise of significant influence. Following the easing of tensions after the Second Vatican Council, however, Molnár found himself largely isolated; he was unable to accommodate the turn taken by the Western world in its détente with China and the Soviet Union. In France, his perceptive, incisive writings found little reception. Unlike Mircea Eliade or Paul Ricoeur – both of whom found refuge in Chicago – Molnár was not exiled, yet his audience became restricted to a smaller circle. In this context, his return to Hungary after 1990 marked the beginning of a new creative phase, bringing him recognition that had been only sparsely granted elsewhere: he received the country’s highest state honours, and his readership – and with it his critical audience – unexpectedly broadened.
In his autobiographically inspired works (Moi, Symmaque & L’Âme et la machine, 1996; Én, Symmachus; Lélek és gép (lit. I Symmachus; Soul and Machine), 2000), Molnár reflects on his life. He likens himself to Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (345–402), a Roman senator of the fourth–fifth centuries, who in a Christianising Senate vainly petitioned for the restoration of the statue and cult of the goddess Victoria. Symmachus, one of the last great representatives of Hellenistic learning, did not contest the necessity of a new epoch but disagreed with the means and execution of the transition. Unlike those who served the glory of Constantinople rather than Rome, he believed that Rome could endure – not merely in ideological terms but also militarily and politically. Symmachus maintained a close association with Flavius Stilicho, the last Roman general capable of halting Gothic attacks on Rome. Stilicho’s death precipitated the collapse of Rome’s defences and Alaric’s Gothic victory; though Symmachus did not live to witness this, his contemporaries could justifiably believe that the senator’s efforts, particularly the restoration of Victoria’s cult, might have averted Rome’s fall.
Molnár assumes the stance of this ancient Symmachus, arguing for the necessity of restoring the old order. Should this restoration fail, he warns, the consequences would be incalculable: the complete collapse of the Western tradition. Yet this tradition embodies values essential for human survival; humanity must either renew its knowledge of these values and follow them, or at the very least arrest their erosion, preserving both the knowledge and the practices derived from it. In this way, Molnár maintains order against chaos, civilisation against barbarism, morality against disintegration, and living intellectual vitality against lethal intellectual sterility. He dedicated his life to the task of remembrance and admonition. Solitary, like Symmachus in the Senate – whether in the United States, Paris, or Budapest – he nevertheless remained steadfast in the convictions of his youth until the final alert moments of his life, confident that the principal aims of his oeuvre would find continuation and heirs.
[2015]