The intellectual resistance to totalitarian regimes can take many forms such as Lech Walesa's Solidarity. This volume portrays one such story of resistance in Romania during the reign of Ceausescu: that of Constantin Noica, one of the country's foremost intellectuals. Noica was an original thinker belonging to the intellectual generation which included figures such as Mircea Eliade, E.M. Ciorin and Eugene Ionescu, but he chose to stay in Romania after the communist takeover when many others fled. Harassed and jailed for six years, Noica retreated to the mountains and gathered around him some brilliant young minds and future talent to challenge and nurture them in a time when communism denied them the materials of true intellectual importance. This group of students withdrew to Noica's retreat for intensive philosophical sessions to debate the works of Kant, Plato and Heidegger and discuss humanistic values. The author of this volume Liiceanu, was Noica's closest disciple and during every meeting he noted every conversation in a diary which came to be known as "The Paltinis Diary". These conversations were secretly published and devoured by intellectuals. Secret Police censorship meant the book was banned and not published again until 1991 by which time Noica had died and the group had disbanded to help with the reconstruction of post-Ceausescu Romania.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Romanian
Original Language: Romanian
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Butter vs Culture.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Paltinis Diary: A Paideic Model in Humanist Culture (Central European Library of Ideas) (Hardcover)
Philosophy is a way to leave your life. This book helps you to understand better the difference between this two questions: "What are you doing for living?" and "What are you doing in life (or better with your life)?".You have to make the choice between "butter" and "culture". But when Noica talks about culture, he doesn't mean: food, clothing, religion or holyday customs. Noica talks about having the "Greek Miracle" and the" German Idealism" as the only tools which will help you to do CULTURE (Philosophy). So let's start to study Ancient Greek for the "Greek Miracle" and German for the "German Idealism" so maybe we can answer the second question: What are you doing in life ?.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unspoken Truths,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Paltinis Diary: A Paideic Model in Humanist Culture (Central European Library of Ideas) (Paperback)
There were many forms of resistance under communism and we don't know them all yet. Liiceanu's Paltinis Diary constitutes such an example no doubt. Articulated as a reverential homage to Constantin Noica, Liiceanu's master, this book is full of insights into a subculture of intellectual resistance through the "paideic model" to communist ideology and dogmatism generally. The "master" also seems to be proposing a resistance to "modern rationality," or capitalism, into culture, spiritual elevation, and political passivity, as a form of legitimate apolitical disengagement. Today, the west is generally used to identify forms of resistance to communism with the help of a tripping "grand theory" of dissident-intellectuals: active, politically militant, promoting "socialism with humane face" or outright liberalism. Think only of Adam Michnik, Václav Havel, the leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, or the technocratic elite in Hungary. But what could one do in Romania under a tyrant, Ceausescu? Nothing? This book is indicative that subversive resistance existed and that if dissent was impossible to utter in the open air, a duplicitously undermining complicity managed to leave some gray areas for alternative knowledge. If there are some moral problems in this form of Noica apolitical resistance, then these are exactly the lack of any intention of engaging into political action, in any form, in any way. We are left with some kind of a disconcerting idea of mystico-humanistic deliverance. There is also a sectarian feeling traversing the book--which is also understandable in light of Ceausescu's cruelly autocratic governance--but one keeps wondering if the paideic model is an elitist formula for a "city of gods." What about the average Romanian citizen, student, reader--in either communism or post-communism? How could such a paideic model empower them change their "human condition" and command them as masters over their own destiny as individuals, as "citizens of the polis?" Yet another problem is the total absence of a critical discussion over Noica's fascist past as an intellectual-legionnary in interwar Romania. The distinction between, on the one hand, Noica, Mircea Eliade Emil Cioran, and their master Nae Ionescu, and, on the other hand, the Iron Guard, the legionnaries par excellence, is quite significant, but there is no debate about this issue in the book, at least in a preface or introduction. One wonders if this is not an effort to mystify uncomfortable unspoken truths. It is a great mistake to leave Noica's past open to speculation and re-appropriation by ill-intentioned neo-fascists. On the other hand, a critical engagement into the political positioning of this interwar generation of intellectuals would clarify if and how such a political dedication could alter Noica's philosophy, Eliade's myths, or Heidegger's philosophy, as various pros and cons have been voiced in this regard. Finally, are these things discussed in Romania or are they "politically incorrect" critical approaches? It is interesting that neither the publishing house nor the editorial review mentions such insights, which are normally studied in the history departments of any decent western university. Nonetheless, the Paltinis Diary remains a valuable proof of "life under communism," of human aspiration for knowledge, of the particular intellectual conditions of Romania, and of challenging intellectual relationships between past, present, and future.
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