Intellectual Elasticity as a Blagian Episteme: The Basis of a Modus Vivendi between His Philosophy and Dramaturgy

Abstract The article proposes for debate a new perspective on the work of Lucian Blaga. Following a suggestion from Blaga himself that his literary and philosophical works are not co-planar and therefore should not be reduced to a common denominator, but judged according to the intrinsic norms of each, many critics of Blaga’s work have tried to keep this distance. The result has been a dialog of the deaf. But there have also been authors who, blurring the boundaries between the two genres, have reduced either philosophy to literature or literature to philosophy. The result is a chimera. The author of the present article, aware of the autonomy of the two fields, attempts to find a comprehensive middle position that sheds new light on Blaga’s work. By placing philosophy (the systematic-Blagian one) and dramaturgy (represented in this text by the drama Zalmoxis ) in parallel, the article tries to capture a certain modus operandi of the Blagian spirit, associated with a meta-disciplinary spirit, a creative spirit, which is not absorbed in any disciplinary practice, but operates freely within each of them. The point of this essay is this: whether writing theater or philosophy, Blaga manifests a spiritual elasticity that overthrows the rigid principle of identity, responsible for many sterile philosophical and literary practices.