Romanian philosophy
Cantemir authored a textbook of logic and a treatise of "theologo-physics", Sacrosanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago (1700) which, besides discussing the nature of time, and the problem of the universals, tries to justify Biblical cosmogony with non-theological arguments drawing on the philosophy of Jan Baptist van Helmont.
Among them, we can mention Lambros Photiades, Konstantinos Vardalachos, Neophyte Doucas and Benjamin Lesvios in Bucharest, as well as Daniel Philippidis, Stephanos Doungas and Dimitrios Panayotou Govdelas in Iași.
Philosophically, the most interesting of these authors is Beniamin Lesvios, whose Metaphysics contains, among other valuable things, a theory of perception involving the discussion of the conceptual possibility of colour-inversion.
Krug's Handbook of Philosophy and Philosophical Literature will be translated in the first period of the 19th century another three times, by August Treboniu Laurian (1810–1881), Timotei Cipariu (1805–1887) and Simeon Barnutiu (1808–1864).
His views on space and time oppose Kantian doctrines, and he argues explicitly against the German philosopher, who in his opinion had turned history into a mere fairy tale.
Dumitru Draghicescu obtained his licence in philosophy with a memoir on the Influence of Kant on Auguste Compte (1901) at the University of Bucharest, continuing his studies in Paris, where he did his doctorate with Durkheim.
One of Draghicescu's books, Vérité et révelation: vers une nouvelle idée de Dieu (2 volumes, 1934), was very well received by Charles Hartshorne, for the authentically new aspects of the concept of God which it put forth.
Mircea Florian, who studied in Germany with the Neokantian Rehmke, elaborated between the wars a philosophy of the "pure datum", trying to overcome the epistemology based on the subject-object dichotomy.
Mircea Eliade, the well-known scholar of the history of religions, published a few essays showing the influence of his teacher Ionescu, but through these early works he brought nothing essentially new in the landscape of the Romanian philosophy.
Emil Cioran, in his early books written in Romanian, proposed a philosophy of despair, shows a morbid obsession with death, all expressed in a deeply lyrical manner.
His PhD thesis was called A Sketch for the History of How Something New May be Possible, where he tries to answer how the spirit is not "endlessly tautologous", analysing European philosophy from Plato to Hume.
D. D. Rosca, who would later be the coordinator and translator of the series of complete works of Hegel into Romanian, arrived at a philosophical synthesis presented in his book The Tragic Existence.
From the multitude of philosophical authors unaffiliated to the previous three currents we can mention here (almost randomly) Vasile Bancilă (1897–1979), Ionel Gherea, Anton Dumitriu (1905–1992) and Stéphane Lupasco (1900–1988).
The name "mioritical" comes from "miorița", diminutive of sheep, i.e. an Ewe, the famous title of a popular ballad that is widely considered as quite relevant of the Romanian worldview, written in a peculiar alternating style.
Among the most important members of this group of scientific philosophy were fellow mathematicians Grigore Moisil and Dan Barbilian as well as other notorious scientists like Șerban Țițeica or Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.
Their results were published in the anthology The Problem of Determinism, or in some monographs as Onicescu's Principles of Scientific Knowledge, Georgescu-Roegen's The Statistical Method or P. Sergescu's Mathematical Thinking.
With mostly rudimentary means, over-simplifications, appealing to the "Marxist-Leninist" doctrine, Patrascanu polemicized with major philosophers as Blaga, Radulescu-Motru, Florian, Cioran and "exposed" them as idealists, irrationalists, mystics, bourgeois, imperialists and sometimes fascists.
During these first decades, philosophy was taught in Universities by dentists or illiterate workers turned into professors virtually overnight: Following Stalin's death, hardcore communist dogma slowly lost some of its force.
The most important philosophers formed in the interbellum period, that could practice again philosophy, and remained significantly creative are: Mircea Florian, Constantin Noica, Anton Dumitriu, Mihai Șora (b.
His ontology (more correctly called metaphysics) is edified without the idiomatic peculiarities in two later works, and consists of The Becoming in-to the Being and Letters on the Logic of Hermes, but it was incipient since Six Maladies of the Contemporary Spirit.
Although due to his political antecedents and uncompromising content of philosophical ideas and religious faith Țuțea could not publish very much, he wrote a considerable amount, including a late work projected in five volumes, "Problems, Systems, Styles, Sciences" and finally "Dogmas".
His various writings are hardly classifiable, and even though he never finished whatever he started, after his release from prison Țuțea elaborated at least three original literary-philosophical styles: The Philosophy of Nuances, Theatre as Seminar and Religious-theologal Reflections.
The subsequent publication of a collection of aphorisms gathered from interviews became a best seller, while his major writings are still not very well known or appreciated, although Țuțea was always surrounded by friends who typed and multiplied his manuscripts.
Neighbours usually called him "Professor", because he always seemed to lecture, but as he ironically pointed out, his legendary tenured "chair" was under the blue sky, in the campus of Cișmigiu – a central park in Bucharest, very close to his studio apartment.
Several of his close friends and companions such as Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Petre Pandrea, later Marcel Petrișor, Aurel-Dragoș Munteanu and from the younger generation Radu Preda and Alexandru Popescu are also accomplished philosophers, writers and scholars.
Alexandru Dragomir is a late discovery of the Romanian public, actively promoted by the Humanitas Publishing House (led by Gabriel Liiceanu), which edited some of his notebooks.
Following the examples of Anton Dumitriu, Grigore Moisil or Octav Onicescu, several teachers at the University of Bucharest oriented themselves toward epistemology and the philosophy of science, which due to its technical nature lacked ideological control and interference.
The structuralist analysis of theories was applied by Ilie Parvu in the domain of the reconstruction of some crucial philosophical works, like the Tractatus of Wittgenstein or the Critique of Pure Reason.
Analytic philosophy has developed mostly at the University of Bucharest, by such names as Mircea Dumitru, Adrian-Paul Iliescu, Adrian Miroiu, Valentin Mureșan, Mihail-Radu Solcan.
In this essay of cultural and political philosophy Patapievici develops a conservative critique of late modernity, of vast scope and unequal pertinence, making him however the most notable contemporary Romanian liberal-conservative thinker.
