Talk:Romanian philosophy

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This article represents my original research, which has not been published yet. I was insufficiently familiar with the copyright policy of the wikipedia when I posted it. I do not grant the copyright to wikipedia. Therefore, I demand that it be deleted, as I have tried several times and failed. I explicitely assume authorship of this article and declare it my intellectual property. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogdan rusu (talk • contribs) 16:56, 4 July 2007

The license assignment wording is very clear & in a prominent position-- and not reversible. The copyright will permanently be GFDL. You will still have the right that your name is associated with the edits.

However, as you are the only substantial contributor, you have the right to ask for the article deleted, and is has been. DGG (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

POV

This article seems to contain some amount of the author's opinions, as indicated by words such as "interesting" and "obviously". Accordingly, I have tagged the article with {{POV}}. It is not a problem that can easily be fixed due to the article's lack of inline citations, which is already indicated by the existing {{More citations needed}} tag. Biogeographist (talk) 16:25, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

POV

Bogdan Rusu introduces his article with the words: «Romanian philosophy is a name covering either a) the philosophy done in Romania or by Romanians, or b) an ethnic philosophy, which expresses at a high level the fundamental features of the Romanian spirituality, or which elevates to a philosophical level the Weltanschauung of the Romanian people, as deposited in language and folklore, traditions, architecture and other linguistic and cultural artifacts.»

Phrases like «ethnic philosophy», «Romanian spirituality» are idiosyncratic at best; it is not evident what they refer to. It is also unclear how «an ethnic philosophy … [can] elevate to a philosophical level the Weltanschauung of the Romanian people». What is a «philosophical level»? Is the Romanian people so homogenous to have one single Weltanschauung? Usually, what is alive, changes. Has the Romanian people never ever changed, so that it always had a perennial unique Weltanschauung, as Bogdan Rusu clearly suggests with the phrase «The Weltanschauung of the Romanian people»? Why is a «Weltanschauung» «elevated» to a (pretty elusive) «philosophical level», and not rather debased?

The same author suggests that «Romanian philosophy», the title of the article, might very well mean also «philosophy done in Romania or by Romanians». However, philosophy done in Romania by ethnic minorities is mentioned in his article only scantily. As an example, Elie Wiesel has been born on Romanian territory, and happened to be an incomparably more original thinker than the ethnic Romanians mentioned in the article. For his intellectual creativity Elie Wiesel received a Nobel price. But that was not enough for Bogdan Rusu to introduce him in his article, because Elie Wiesel was Jewish. Neither ethnic German philosophers from Transylvania are mentioned in the article at all.

Only thoroughly acculturated individuals from ethnic minorities, who have seen their call to assimilate until self-denial into the Romanian ethnicity, are mentioned in Bogdan Rusu's article.

So we have no choice but to draw the conclusion that, indeed, in this author's implicit undertanding, «Romanian philosophy» has the unique meaning of an «ethnic philosophy», whereby the ethnicity is Romanian.

Bogdan Rusu might have done well to look at similar articles. As an example, Korean philosophy is defined in this very source through a people's culture, based in turn on various religions, changing with time. Korean culture and the everchanging Weltanschauung emanating from it, has nothing to do with ethnic purity.

The same Bogdan Rusu is also author of the article Ethiopian philosophy, based on 9 different sources authored by Claude Sumner, 3 sources authored by Teodros Kiros, and another single one. This choice of sources is strange at best, but, at least, he does not eulogize the Ethiopian philosophy in such lofty terms as the ones I quoted at the beginning, referring to Romanian philosophy.

Because of all this, I very much welcome and support Bogdan Rusu's demand to take off this article from wikipedia, and to let him publish this article more explicitly under his own name. That way, he personally would carry the main intellectual resposibility for this article, and he alone would reap all praise and criticism trigerred by it. --Pisipojakene 01:46, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

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To Pisipojakene

Elie Wiesel is no philosopher. Check Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. They didn't include him, I wonder why?

Elie Wiesel was also Hungarian, French, American, Israeli. He published a lot in French and in English. Is he included in the history of French philosophy, or of American philosophy? Do you suggest that, for some reason, he should be more important to Romanian philosophy, even though he was no philosopher and he wrote nothing in Romanian? What would be that reason?

Why would ethnic Germans' contributions belong to the history of Romanian philosophy and not the the history of German philosophy abroad? Transylvania was a part of Hungary. Why should ethnic German philosophers in Transylvania, up to 1919, not belong to the history of Hungarian philosophy? And ethnic Romanian philosophers in Transylvania, until 1919, do they belong to the history of Hungarian philosophy? Or of Austrian philosophy? Wait, Romanian principalities were parts of the Ottoman Empire. Does that make ethnic Romanian philosophers prior to 1878 a part of the history of Ottoman philosophy? You say nothing of the ethnic Hungarian philosophers in Transylvania. Should they also belong to the history of Romanian philosophy? Should Karoly Böhm be considered a Romanian philosopher? But surely you know that ethnic Hungarian philosophers in Transylvania are prominent figures of the history of philosophy in Hungary. Should Peter Beron be considered a Romanian philosopher? He lived, wrote and died in Romania. But surely you know he is the greatest Bulgarian philosopher of the 19th century. Just because he identified himself as Bulgarian and was a Bulgarian patriot, and wanted to promote Bulgarian culture and contribute to Bulgarian revival. Should Romanian culture claim him, despite all this, on the ground that he lived on Romanian soil?

There is no "bias" in defining Romanian philosophy as the philosophy done in Romanian and/or by Romanians (that means, self-identifying Romanians, regardless of their ethnicity. Did Wiesel identified himself as Romanian? Or do you just propose to annex him against his will to the history of Romanian culture? Do you think he should belong to the history of Romanian literature?). It is just being to the point.

In short, I really don't see much ground in your objections.