Blaga, Lucian (1895–1961)

Poet, playwright, essayist and philosopher, Blaga was the most interesting and original Romanian thinker of the first half of the twentieth century. His philosophical ideal was a system of thought which he conceived as a systematic and speculative construction and an explanation of the meaning of human life based on a metaphysical vision of the nature of existence. Within the framework of this metaphysical outlook Blaga elaborates a philosophical cosmology, a philosophy of knowledge, a philosophy of culture and a philosophy of values. He did not pretend that his metaphysical conjectures represent contributions to an impersonal knowledge of the absolute: rather, he considered them as free creations of the conceptual imagination which cannot claim universal recognition. Blaga’s work occupies a special place in Romanian philosophical thought: it is both without precedent and without a significant sequel.