- PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY -

From its very inception, the Romanian Academy has had prestigious philosophers among its members. Such was Titu Maiorescu, founding member of the Academic Society. A powerful personality of European scope, who dominated Romanian cultural life in the second half of the 19th century, Titu Maiorescu was equally gifted as a literary critic and as an aesthetician, philosopher of culture and logician, and made decisive contributions to the differentiation of cultural values and removal of their confusion with moral values.

For several decades, philosophy was represented in the Academy by means of diverse preoccupations, communications, debates or presentations of awards for philosophical books, although philosophers, psychologists or pedagogues did not as yet have a section of their own. Thus in one of the Academy’s plenary sessions of 1872, George Barit (member of the Section of History of the Romanian Academy) presented Darwin’s Theories and professed to be one of their adepts as he stressed the role of evolutionism in science and philosophy. Toward the end of the 19th century, another member of the Romanian Academy, A. D. Xenopol, a philosopher of history, and H. Rickert took opposite views of the idea of value in history. Newly elected members of the Academy in their acceptance speeches also explored philosophical themes. In 1909, the annual Romanian Academy Award went to the work of a philosopher, Constantin Radulescu-Motru, whose book was entitled Puterea sufleteasca (Strength of Spirit). Elected member of the Romanian Academy in 1925 and Vice President in 1935, he was the main promoter of philosophy as a statutory preoccupation of the Academy, which became fact in 1941 when the Section of Historical, Philosophical and Social Sciences was established.

Later on, the Institute of Philosophy (1948), the Center for Logic (1964), and the Institute of Psychology (1950) were also established and placed under the authority of the Section. In 1974, they were passed on to the Academy of Social and Political Sciences, but returned to the Romanian Academy in 1990. In 1995, religion sciences were also included amongst the preoccupations of the Academy, so that at the moment there is a Section of Philosophy, Theology, Psychology and Pedagogy which coordinates the activity of the Institutes of Philosophy, Social Theory, Psychology and of those researchers interested in such problems at the Institutes of Socio-Human Research in Cluj and Iasi.

Distinguished and representative personalities of the Romanian philosophical sciences were elected members of the Academy. One example is Nicolae Bagdasar, who wrote a treatise on Teoria cunoasterii (The Theory of Knowledge) and coordinated a compendium on Istoria filosofiei moderne (The History of Modern Philosophy) in five volumes, which continue to be reference works today. A very productive thinker and writer, C. Radulescu-Motru, already mentioned above, authored among others Personalismul energetic (Energetic Personalism). Creator of an original system which can be applied to the Romanian forma mentis, Lucian Blaga wrote the monumental works Trilogia cunoasterii (The Trilogy of Knowledge), Trilogia culturii (The Trilogy of Culture), Trilogia valorilor (TheTrilogy of Values), and Trilogia cosmogonica (TheCosmogonic Trilogy). Other worthy philosophers were Ion Petrovici, who wrote Probleme de logica (Problems of Logic) and Introducere īn metafizica (Introduction to Metaphysics), and P. P. Negulescu, author of Filosofia renasterii (The Philosophy of the Renaissance) and Destinul Omenirii (Mankind’s Destiny). Tudor Vianu published an important two-volume Estetica (Aesthetics), and Dumitru Staniloaie, a three-volume Tratat de teologie dogmatica ortodoxa (Treatise of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology), translated into several foreign languages of international circulation.

Outstanding foreign thinkers were elected Honorary Members of the Romanian Academy, among others Léon Brunschwicg, Benedetto Croce, Charles Upson Clark, Thomas Masaryk, David Magnusson etc.

Some of the works published in recent years by researchers affiliated with the Academy are: Contributii romānesti īn domeniul logicii secolului XX (Romanian Contributions to Logic in the 20th Century), Orientari contemporane īn filosofia logicii (Contemporary Directions in the Philosophy of Logic), Hermeneutica si ontologie (Hermeneutics and Ontology), Realism si relativism īn fisosofia stiintei contemporane (Realism and Relativism in the Philosophy of Science Today), Valoare si cultura (Value and Culture), Psihologie cognitiva (Cognitive Psychology), Introducere īn psihologia contemporana (Introduction to Psychology), Competenta didactica: perspectiva psihologica (Didactic Competency: A Psychological Perspective) etc.

Research results are periodically published in Revista de Filosofie (Journal of Philosophy) and Revista de Psihologie (Journal of Psychology), which also appear in French.

 
 

 

copyright © Romanian Academy 2006

copyright © Academia Romānă 2006