Lajos Szabó
Together with several other members of the Munkakör (Movement of Work), Lajos Szabó was expelled from this communist organisation.
This leftist, anti-capitalist and, at the same time, anti-Bolshevik social movement was also connected to the uncompromising Marxism of Karl Korsch In 1930 Lajos Szabó got to know Béla Tábor with whom he had a close work relationship until the end of his life.
Lajos Szabó wrote a number of studies that were published only after his death: Megjegyzések a marxizmus kritikájához [Remarks on the Critique of Marxism], A tudományos szocializmus bírálatához [A Contribution to the Critique of Scientific Socialism], A mammonizmus természetrajzához [On the Nature of Mammonism], Adalékok a halmazelmélet kérdéseihez [Contributions to the Theory of Sets], Nietzsche).
A very important study by Lajos Szabó is Biblia és romantika (The Bible and Romanticism) which was written based on a lecture he gave in 1941.
Lajos Szabó and Béla Tábor laid the foundations of the Budapest Dialogical School in the post-war years.
During these years they cooperated closely with Béla Hamvas, a writer and essayist and also with Lajos Fülep, an art historian.
In these lectures Lajos Szabó strove at a synthesis of the pre-philosophical situation (e.g. Indian tradition and the pre-Socratic philosophers) with the post-philosophical approach, i.e. the critique of philosophy, religion and art which is to be found in the works of the great figures of the 19th century, such as Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche).
Lajos Szabó's thinking is closely related to the achievements of the philosophy of the dialogue as represented by Ferdinand Ebner, Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, and he called himself also a "language philosopher".
In 1960 Lajos Szabó travelled around West Germany, and his calligraphies were exhibited in Munich, Dortmund, Hamburg and Hagen.
Although the knowledge of Marxism and its ways of thinking were indeed present in Lajos Szabó's thinking, his main sources were existentialist thinkers in particular the twentieth-century philosophy of the dialogue represented by Franz Rosenzweig and, above all, Ferdinand Ebner (Das Wort and die geistigen Realitäten).
These are the most important topics in the writings of Lajos Szabó: His most-cited work, written together with his close associate, Béla Tábor, is Vádirat a szellem ellen (Indictment of the Spirit)[1] consists of three parts.
This book takes the whole of intellectual life to account: "Someone should at last undertake performing the embarrassing task, and pull off the veil of innocence from the only factor which has remained intact so far in a world splintered along conflicting interests and characterised by the bellum omnium contra omnes, the spirit.
Nations fought terrible battles, millions died and the spirit could be the accuser: come and behold the work of politicians!
Masses live in abject poverty, classes lose the ground below their feet, the mechanism of production bogs down, and the spirit can assume the role of the accuser: come and behold the social structure!
Terrible epidemics decimate whole peoples and sordid sins are revealed, and the spirit can become the accuser again: come and see today's health-care!
"[3] This book review by Béla Hamvas, which at the time of its writing the publisher refused to publish because he thought the reviewer gave this work too much recognition, finishes with the highly topical, indeed poetic statement: "Life becomes more and more difficult for man, because he knows more and more.
Lajos Szabó came to the recognition that signs, inspired by letters and replacing them, are the direct manifestations of the soul.
[6] A meaningful number of calligraphies originating from the period preceding the end of 1956 [7] was exhibited in 1980 in the Budapest Club of Young Artists.
