Elemente de conștiință națională premodernă în opera lui Dimitrie Cantemir [Articol]

Abstract

Elements of premodern national consciousness in the work of Dimitrie Cantemir. The central core of this scientific communication is given by the analysis of Cantemir’s works, in a European and Romanian context, to reveal the elements of pre-modern national consciousness in the work of the Moldavian prince and scholar. In the Introduction, a series of assessments regarding the ’crisis of European consciousness’ (Paul Hazard), from the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, the period of Dimitrie Cantemir’s intellectual formation and the ’roots of nationalism’ (Lotte Jensen) are presented. The central part of the short paper is dedicated to the presentation and interpretation of the paragraphs from the Cantemirian works, which deal with the terms manor/fatherland/homeland. The final part of the communication highlights the basic conclusions of the ‘traditionalist’ school of history (with an emphasis on the works of Caspar Hirschi and Azar Gat), which considers nations, of which ethnicity is an essential component, to be creations significantly older than the age modern, as claimed by the ’modernist’ school of history. The authors conclude that the works of the Moldavian prince make the logical transition, given by the evolution of European historical science, from the humanism of the Moldovan Miron Costin and the Wallachian Constantin Cantacuzino to the ’patriotic’ Enlightenment of the Transylvanian School. In addition, analysing the scientific references brought into discussion and Dimitrie Cantemir’s own conceptions related to the idea of homeland and people, the authors conclude that the latter represent the expression of a premodern national consciousness.