Milan Kangrga
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Western Philosophers 20th-century philosophy |
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| Name |
Milan Kangrga
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| Birth | 1 May 1923, (Zagreb, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) |
| Death | 25 April 2008 |
| School/tradition | Praxis School |
| Main interests | Ethics, Marxism |
Milan Kangrga (born: 1 May 1923; died: 25 April 2008) was a Croatian philosopher born in Zagreb. He was one of the leading thinkers in the Praxis school of thought which originated in the 1960s in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Kangrga attended elementary and grammar school in Zagreb. In 1950, he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, where he commenced his work as a teaching assistant working in the fields of ethics and aesthetics. Between 1962 and 1964 he studied in Heidelberg, Germany. He became a tenured professor in 1972 and this is the position that he held until his retirement in 1993.
Kangrga started his confrontation with the Yugoslav communist leadership during his undergraduate studies in February 1948, before the clash of Tito with Stalin. Then, he has published his first philosophical article entitled On Ethics in Studentski List (Zagreb), which the League of Communists of Yugoslavia bureaucrats have found provoking. In 1953 Kangrga became a member of the LCY but already in 1954 he was expelled from the party because he announced that he was inspired to become a communist by the works of Miroslav Krleža, who still wasn't wholly rehabilitated by the regime.
In 1964 Kangrga was one of the founders of the journal Praxis. Together with Rudi Supek, he has established the Korcula Summer School, which was a unique meeting place for philosophers from the East and the West between 1964 and 1974. It is around these two institutions that the Praxis school took shape. The defining features of the school were: 1) emphasis on the writings of young Marx; and 2) call for freedom of speech in both East and West based upon Marx's insistence on ruthless critique of everything existent. Milan Kangrga emphasized creativity as well, but also the understanding of human beings as producers humanizing nature.
Milan Kangrga has lectured in Bonn, Münich, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, and Kiev among other cities. His articles have been published in Germany, Italy, the United States, France, Spain, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Mexico.
[edit] Major works
Kangrga has published twelve books in Croatian language. The most important are:
- The Ethical Problem in Karl Marx's Works (1963)
- Ethics and Liberty (1966)
- The Meaning of the Historical (1970)
- The Man and the World (1975)
- Ethics or Revolution (1983)
- Praxis-Time-World (1984)
- Hegel-Marx: some basic problems of Marxism (1988)
- The Meaning and the Reality (1989)
- Smugglers of Own Life (2001)
- Nationalism and Democracy (2002)
- Ethics: the basic problems and tendencies (2004)
[edit] External links
- Autobiography (Croatian)
- 2004 Danas interview with Kangrga (Serbian)
- Marx's Understanding of Revolution, an article by Kangrga (Croatian)
