World-famous Hungarian philosopher dies

Philosopher Mihály Vajda died on Monday at the age of 88, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences said on Tuesday.

Vajda was born in 1935 in Budapest and graduated from Eotvos Lorand University in philosophy in 1958 and then in German language and literature two years later. From 1961 to 1973, at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he was a student of Gyorgy Lukacs.

In 1973, he was sacked for political reasons. From 1973, he was a visiting professor in Bremen and New York.

His research areas were phenomenology, 20th century German philosophy and the theory of totalitarian societies. He defended his academic doctoral thesis in 1992, and in 2000 became the president of the philosophy section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and in 2007 became a full member. In 2005, he was appointed director of the Philosophical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which he headed until 2009.

Vajda received several prestigious awards, including the Szechenyi Prize in 1999.

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