Petre Paul Negulescu (October 18, 1870 – September 28, 1951) was a Romanian philosopher and conservative politician, known as a disciple and continuator of Titu Maiorescu. Affiliated with Maiorescu's Junimea society from his early twenties, he debuted as a positivist and monist, attempting to reconcile art for art's sake with an evolutionist philosophy of culture. He was a lecturer and tenured professor at the University of Iași, where he promoted the Junimist lobby against left-wing competitors, and formalized his links with the Conservative Party in 1901. From 1910, he taught at the University of Bucharest, publishing works on Renaissance philosophy and other historical retrospectives. After World War I, Negulescu was an affiliate (later president) of the radical-conservative People's Party, and an advocate of labor and education reform. Serving several terms in Parliament, he was twice the Public Education Minister in the 1920s, but failed to enact his project for vocational-centered schooling. By 1934, as an adversary of the nationalist far-right, he wrote tracts rejecting biological determinism of all sorts, and scientific racism in particular. Pushed in the minority by supporters of statism, Negulescu supported meritocracy within the framework of classical liberalism. He was sidelined by right-wing totalitarian regimes after 1940, and ultimately banned, shortly before his death, by the communist regime.
Biography
Early years and debut Petre Negulescu is widely believed to have been born in Ploiești in October 1872. However, his early papers give his birth date as October 18, 1870, a date he probably concealed and replaced for vanity reasons. As a youth, he attended Saints Peter and Paul High School in his native city, and subsequently enrolled in the sciences faculty of the University of Bucharest, being especially interested in mathematics. After hearing several lectures on the history of philosophy delivered by Titu Maiorescu, he transferred to the literature and philosophy faculty, graduating in 1892. In March 1891, by that time a student of Maiorescu's, he began attending meetings of Junimea literary society, where he met Simion Mehedinți and Mihail Dragomirescu. From his student days, Negulescu supported the patriotic activism of Romanians in Austro-Hungarian-ruled Transylvania. In 1890, together with Mehedinți, he edited Memoriul studenților universitari români privitor la situația românilor din Transilvania și Ungaria ("A Memorandum of Romanian University Students Regarding the Situation of Romanians in Transylvania and Hungary"), a document that also appeared in French and was meant to draw European public attention to the Magyarization policy of the Budapest government. He belonged to the leadership committee of the Cultural League for the Unity of All Romanians, founded in Bucharest the same year. Encouraged by his mentor, he completed his theoretical preparation at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Paris. He became an associate professor in 1894, aged 22, in the history of modern philosophy and logic department of the University of Iași. Both Negulescu and Teohari Antonescu, the archaeologist, were moved there in a bid to ensure Junimea control over the university, and to consolidate the conservative circles of Iași, against a rising tide of socialist influence. Although he found the city "repulsive" and a "place of exile", Negulescu accepted his appointment as a political and cultural mission. He was soon disappointed by the local Junimea branch and its president, N. Volenti, asking Maiorescu to send them better cultural material. In these early years, Negulescu was heavily indebted to Maiorescu's influence, down to oratory: he was known (and ridiculed) for copying Maiorescu's speech mannerisms. Also like Maiorescu, he was an atheist and a positivist, who read religion in functionalist terms. Negulescu's publishing debut came in 1892, with a metaphysical essay, Critica apriorismului și a empirismului ("A Critique of Apriorism and Empiricism"), earning him the Romanian Academy award in philosophy. The title indicates the two main philosophical currents rejected by Negulescu, who sought a middle road between transcendental idealism and resurgent anti-realism, finalism, and theism. He found it in "realistic empiricism", a brand of monism, evolutionism and scientism that quoted heavily from Herbert Spencer. His monistic outlook fell short of classical positivism and historical materialism, since it rehabilitated metaphysical inquiry as a legitimate pursuit. Various authors have regretfully noted that Negulescu never truly developed his tentative metaphysical system, which appeared to them inconclusive.
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