Constantin Noica (1909-1987), friend of Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, was an idealist philosopher, the author of original treatises on ontology (drawing on Hegel’s triadic scheme), on logic and on cultural morphology (somewhat in the manner of Oswald Spengler and Leo Frobenius), and also of a series of essays on the Romanian “spirit” or “soul”, where he etymologically takes apart popular Romanian collocations to produce unexpected metaphysical intuitions that allegedly lie buried in them. His hagiographic portrait of the Romanian national character, his political persecution at the hands of the communist regime, his reclusiveness and his unmistakable paradoxical style all helped make him one of the most revered cultural personalities in communist Romania, in spite of recent…
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Citation: Stefanescu, Bogdan. "Constantin Noica". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 January 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13291, accessed 21 November 2024.]