After defining utopianism Czigányik gives a brief introduction to Hungarian utopian literature. While he discusses Tariménes utazása [‘The Voyage of Tariménes’], written by György Bessenyei in 1804, the utopian scenes of Imre Madách’s Az ember tragédiája [‘The Tragedy of Man’, 1862] and Frigyes Karinthy’s short utopian piece, Utazás Faremidoba [‘Voyage to Faremido’, 1916], the bulk of the paper deals with Mór Jókai’s monumental novel, A jövő század regénye, [‘The Novel of the Century to Come’, 1872]. Jókai, who had taken an active part in the 1848 uprising, depicts in this novel a future world of an imaginary twentieth century, where Hungary has primacy within the Habsburg empire (with the emperor king being Árpád Habsburg) and the invention of the airplane (by a Hungarian) brings lasting peace, stability and prosperity to the world. Besides introducing the Hungarian utopian tradition, the paper will reflect upon the role of individuals in imagined societies and how an agency-centered narrative overwrites the essentially structuralist view of history, that usually permeates utopias.

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The interpretation of time has been a challenge to philosophers, writers, and common people alike since the dawn of mankind, more precisely, since the appearance of ancient, natural religions. This paper, after giving an overview of the various responses in the history of philosophy to the challenge of the concept of time since Augustine and Averroës, analyses the circular notion of history expounded in Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel, The Wanting Seed. Linear time, the roots of which are found in both Antiquity and Judeo-Christian religious texts such as the Bible, is mainly the prerogative of “modern man,” whilst circularity is more engraved in the (sub)conscious of natural religions, “primitive societies,” as Mircea Eliade calls them. In Burgess’s book the protagonist, a fictive teacher describes a view of history in cycles that change according to the anthropological aspects of the dominant ideology. The holders of power may either view their citizens optimistically as essentially good-willing and obedient, or through the lenses of Augustinian pessimism. The novel demonstrates through quick changes in the approaches of the governing groups how the lives of individuals are influenced by such changes, while the paper investigates how human freedom is impacted through a cyclical, hence deterministic view of history. The paper examines the central question whether the circular, paradoxical historical pattern described in The Wanting Seed, which deletes most opportunities for human freedom, free will and progress, can be called history at all.

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