István Mészáros (philosopher)
István Mészáros (UK: /ˈmɛsərɒs/, US: /-roʊs/, Hungarian: [ˈiʃtvaːn ˈmeːsaːroʃ]; 19 December 1930 – 1 October 2017) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher. Described as "one of the foremost political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries" by Monthly Review, Mészáros wrote mainly about the possibility of a transition from capitalism to socialism. His magnum opus, Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition (1995), was concerned not only with this theme but provided a conceptual distinction between capitalism and capital, and an analysis of the current capitalist society and its "structural crisis". He was interested in the critique of the "bourgeois ideology", including the idea of "there is no alternative", and he also elaborated analysis on the failures of "real socialism".
István Mészáros | |
|---|---|
| Born | 19 December 1930 |
| Died | 1 October 2017 Margate, England |
| Alma mater | University of Budapest |
| Spouse |
Donatella Morisi
(m. 1956; died 2007) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Marxism |
| Institutions | University of Budapest's Institute of Aesthetics (1951–1956) University of Turin (1956–1959) Bedford College (1959–1961) University of St. Andrews (1961–1966) University of Sussex (1966–1972; 1976–1995) York University (1973–1976) |
| Thesis | Szatíra és valóság ("Satire and Reality")' (1955) |
| Doctoral advisor | György Lukács |
Main interests | Ideology |
Notable ideas | Structural crisis of capital |