Picture of Attila Károly Molnár

Attila Károly Molnár

Attila Károly Molnár is a historian of ideas and director of the Thomas Molnar Institute for Advanced Studies at the Eötvös József Research Centre, Budapest, as well as the Századvég Publishing House. He has conducted research into the history of political and social thinking with a special focus on religion, and has published several books, including A protestáns etika Magyarországon, 1994, 2021 (The Protestant Ethic in Hungary (1994, 2021); Feljegyzések a kaotikus fegyházból, 1999 (Notes from the Chaotic Prison); Edmund Burke (2000); A szabadságolt lelkiismeret I–II, 2014, 2016 (Conscience on Leave I–II, 2014, 2016); and A tanácskozó demokrácia és a megváltó csevegés, 2014 (The Deliberative Democracy and the Redeeming Chatting).
It takes courage to see which situations and expectations the conservative should reject. And it takes courage to say ‘no’. The dilemma of when courage is appropriate and when moderation
Maistre associated the Protestant cult of books and philosophers with individualism, which he saw as the root cause of all the problems of his age.