In an effort to give a historical depth to recent discussions on taste in Aesthetic theory, this paper recovers a 19th century Hungarian paradigm. While taste first came to the forefront of philosophical reflection with the Enlightenment and especially with Kant, by now there is a growing literature on the survival of that discourse in the first half of the 19th century. The present author contributed to the research, which tried to show that in Hungary Count István Széchenyi, an influential political reformer. He can be regarded as an author, who for socio-political reasons relied heavily on the British discourse of politeness and taste. This paper aims to show that the same discourse lived on and was employed in the second half of the 19th century in socio-political debates. The example is Baron Zsigmond Kemény, an admirer and follower of Széchenyi, who transformed the discourse into a bourgeois political-educational program.
In the period of formation of modern nations, celebrations of a political character served as media and formative instruments for collective or national historical memory. This study is directed towards specific celebrations – for the centenaries of three Hungarian statesmen: Lajos Kossuth (1902), István Széchenyi (1891) and Ferenc Deák (1903). It looks at the places of memory in two or three different ethno-linguistic micro-spaces, and in the public space of the counties of Zvolen (Banská Bystrica, Zvolen), Novohrad (Lučenec) and Gemer-Malohont (Rimavská Sobota). By reconstructing their ritual symbolic aspect and the associated attitudes, ideas and values, it uncovers the aim of such undertakings and the functions and forms of historical memory.
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