University professor doctor ACHIM MIHU

Thinking – Society – Culture

MOTTO:
The reality of the society is indissolubly connected to the symbolic element in two
major directions: post festum – its knowledge is impossible without considering the
symbolism involved or substantivized within its framework and ante festum – it’s the work
of the human efforts that foreshadows it in a symbolic manner.

In the delicate ontology of the symbols of thinking and of creativity of the human
experience defined by behaviors, mentalities, values and beliefs, cleared up and subdued to
the research of the ensemble of social life, the professor, the sociologist and the exceptional
monographist, Achim Mihu is noticeable as a scientific and anthropologic complex
personality, with a prolific polyvalent activity developed in the domain of the Romanian
sociological and anthropological culture. To his biography belongs a renowned career of
specialist in social sciences stated in the conceptual-cognitive multiplicity from the point of
view of the learned intellectual, of the recognized theoretician and of the imagist scholar, with
refined spiritual amplitude and with access to important ideas.
Endowed with a spiritual biography that evolved from important reflections of the
intellectual-reflexive thinking that reveals to him the panoramic work, Achim Mihu valorizes
many cultural affinities established by fertile connections with the philosophical thinking of
Lucian Blaga, Constantin Noica, and D.D. Roşca but also by the interference of the multiple
congruencies of ideas shared in chronotopical context with Nicolae Steinhardt and Adrian
Marino. The proportion of the creative-emulative seams of these significant thinkers of the
20th century that he got to know in life with different cultural and professional interactions in
society and about who he wrote important pages, arouse stimulative comprehensive horizons,
dense thematic investigations and important approaches.
Placed in the famous succession gallery of inter-war sociology precursors of Cluj,
Virgil Bărbat, Eugenio Sperantia or George Em. Marica, professor Achim Mihu was noticed
as a remarkable representative of the second generation of specialists of the school of
sociology founded at the University of Cluj. In this university milieu, he showed the authority
of doctrinarian in social science during the years at the Faculty of History-Philosophy by
teaching classes of: methods and techniques of sociological research, social epistemology,
industrial sociology, sociology of small groups, cultural anthropology, philosophical
anthropology, general sociology and contemporary American sociology.
Under the sign of a mathesis configured by the competitive combination of the
sociological, philosophical, scientific, anthropological, esthetical, religious and ethical
knowledge, the essentialist thinker Achim Mihu has shown with great power of observation in
different worlds, the nature of philosopher of the Romanian social phenomenon becoming an
emissive exponent with generous intellectual found of initiatives and accomplishments, who
worked in the competent examination of reality through the elaborate scientific study of the
social universe. The tropism of his thinking, of large vision organized by a thorough
preparation and intensified by a conspicuous critical conscience, was centered around the
promotion of the exploitation of the social layers, from the primary level of interpersonal
relationships to the superior level of classes, groups, nations, civilizations, or, more recently,
of global societies.
Personality with various layers info-structure in the form and conceptual content
materialized in themes, problems, research activities and approaches with interpragmatic
character, Achim Mihu analyzed the compartments of the social reality approaching in a

1
prospective-projective hermeneutics the integrating meanings of founding sociologic works,
being in a fertile dialogue with the unique forms of human experience, but also with its
defining past.
In the investigative fan opened from the common conscience to the scientifical
knowledge, he combined the elevate theoretical register with the methodological and
empirical one and even with prosaism of the every-day social action, outlining a metaphysics
of sociomorphic image of the human in the world.
Achim Mihu was born in Cluj, on 1931 and was in high school at Sibiu when
Transylvania separated from Romania and he finished high school in his native town. He
graduated in 1954 at Bucharest after four years of study at the Faculty of General Economy.
He worked in the superior education, firstly at Bucharest and then he evolved as assistant,
assistant professor, associate professor and university professor at the „Babeş-Bolyai”
University in Cluj. In the propagandistic confusion of the politico-ideological deviations at
the beginning of the 60’s, he exposed the speculative character of the Marxist thinking in
Romania and the maintaining of the fundamentalist dogmatism of Stalinist root, becoming
more and more interested with the domain of sociological problems and starts a series of
researches. In this direction, receiving the methodological effects of the application of the
totality of techniques and procedures of diagnosis and analysis of the interpersonal
relationships in small groups, grounded by Jacob Levy Moreno, American sociologist of
Romanian origin, Achim Mihu evaluated theoretical-explanatory and operational alignments
of this analytical instrument and he drew up conclusions on the sociometric methods that he
wrote down in Sociometrics. He published this work in 1968 and in 1969 he presented it at
the Faculty of Philosophy in Bucharest, being appointed PhD. The scholarship he obtained at
the Cornell University in the USA opened for him a path of professional perspectives, where
between 1968 and 1969 he assimilated the American sociology and he specialized in the
problems of small groups.
Interested in the thorough study of the different problems regarding the fundaments
and the specificity of the pluralist values of the sociological thinking, he perfected
permanently, accumulating a diverse complex of knowledge, with a high-level of
interdisciplinarity, obtained through ardent activity of scientific successively reinforced
through strong contacts with the Anglo-American sociology of expression, publishing in
1970, The American sociology of restricted groups. In 1974 he held a class at the department
Nicolae Iorga of the Columbia University in New York, where he taught two classes of
sociology. Between 1978-1979 he was invited as visiting professor at the Minnesota
University in Minneapolis USA, where he taught to the students and PhDs classes of
sociology of knowledge, approaching comparatively the conceptions of Karl Mannheim and
Karl Marx. In his work The ABC of the sociological investigation, book I-II (1971, 1973) he
defined the scientific configuration of sociology by dividing it through theoretical
classifications relevant for the ideology that assimilated it to the historical materialism. In
Marxism and the human essence (1978) Achim Mihu undertook another hermeneutic step by
evaluating his own position through an anthropological reading of the original form of this
theory, the work being intercepted with echoes in the foreign newspapers in the USA,
Sweden, Hungary etc.
In the career managed professionally through a clever management of competencies in
the didactic domain through the subjects taught, but also at the level of his socio-epistemic
discourse, in the 80’s, he shifted his research interests towards the subjects of cultural
sociology, with special reference to the Transylvanian culture. Captivated by the inter-war
spiritual model, in Meanders of truth (1983) and The Master and the ivy (1988), he reflected
upon problems specific in the spirit of the masterly tradition of the Romanian culture and of
his brilliant representatives: Lucian Blaga, Liviu Rebreanu, D.D. Roşca, Constantin Noica and

2
others. The critics received with appreciations the works, Nicolae Manolescu, Mircea
Iorgulescu and Adrian Marino, identifying in their construction obvious realist restorative
approaches in the spiritual fashion of those times.
The theoretician Achim Mihu quantified paradigms of thinking, systems, concepts,
sociological schools and currents, he extracted original significations regarding the cognitive
foundations of the sociological system and he pointed out in analytical way the problems in
the hypostatization of inter-subjective validity of the sociological image about the world.
Conceiving sociology as explanatory and comprehensive study of the social reality he drew
up explanatory schemes, he formulated refined cognitive strategies, he meditated upon the
human and on his report with the social domain. Complementary to his didactic career he
drew up and published studies of sociology, philosophy, psycho-sociology, mytosophy,
literature and anthropology. Between 1990-1992 he changed to the domain of the problems of
world sociology proposing a systematic reflection on the formation of humans in the duration
of technological civilization and a diagnosis on the sociological state of postmodernism
manifested in the theoretical and praxyological framework of the global socio-system.
In the epistemology of the social knowledge he realized the works Introduction to
sociology (1992), Law Sociology (1992), Cultural Anthropology (1999) and General
sociology (2002), that were published in various editions, the conceptual critical
reexamination, resemantization of the systems of categories and the thematic-methodological
actualization resulted from the theoretical decantation of the various mutations and
transformations that appeared in the permanent evolution of the contemporary reality, of the
social universe in expansion. In these books major themes of cultural sociology and
anthropology are synthesized and new theories and data from the specialty domain are
included.
The original instrument of the apogee of an impetuous vocation creatively laid on an
extended hermeneutical area, illustrated exemplary in general sociology, anthropology,
literary sociology, juridical sociology, psycho-sociology, methodology, cuturology and the
diplomacy of culture and even geopolitics ground the singleness of a thinking of baroque
expression and crown a strong work of modern classicization of universal sociology. In an
architectonic of the treaty of sociology centered in weberian tradition on the social action,
Achim Mihu synthesizes a wide corpus of problems by indicating his innovative contributions
in the domain of action sociology presenting, on the method “virtual action”, making at the
same time a qualified radiography of the types of defining actions for the collective behaviors.
Through detailed analysis, the trainer of sociological school in Cluj revealed the plans of the
scientific explanation, showing the statute of subjectivity that offers specific to the
verification and the confirmation of the research hypothesis in the domain of socio-human
sciences.
He expressed the ability of sapiential vigilance dedicated to the values of the
Romanian culture through the affection he felt in Lucian Blaga in The cultured personality
of the Romanian spirituality (1995), to the life and work of the great thinker of Lancrăm,
where Achim Mihu had the initiative to organize, many years, an interesting symposium-
festival for Blaga.
Teacher with wide universal-academic vision, Achim Mihu teaches classes of general
sociology and general anthropology at the „Avram Iancu” University and, from 1990 he is
PhD coordinator. With the enthusiasm characteristic to the devotement alma mater he was
between the first artisans promoters of the organization of the private superior education in
Cluj, as a dynamic reformatory alternative to the public education, founding in 1993, with
academician Ştefan Pascu, „Avram Iancu” University. Convinced by the social utility and
importance of modern university, from the managerial position of rector he introduced new
modalities and modules for a more professional university life. He imprinted the depth of his

3
knowledge combined with the talent to expose in a simple and elegant manner, to the
explosive measures, combining authority culture with reflexive culture in didactic work of
guidance and research.
In a theoretical domain with many creative resources, as author of some treaties,
works and special didactic and monographic synthesis, Achim Mihu gave content and
signification to his ideas and positions of thinking in the 13 published books, 80 forewords
and over 135 articles, in studies, reviews, exegesis and essays. He wrote in periodical
publications, he had permanent columns like “Life of Sociology”, in „Steaua” and „Cronica
ideilor” magazines, in the magazine „Tribuna’ and he founded, as editor-in-chief, with his
youngest colleagues at the „Avram Iancu” University in Cluj, the half-yearly magazine
„Thinking, culture and society”. Over the years he gave many interviews in „Vatra”,
„Tribuna”, „Korunk”, „Amfiteatru”, „Flacăra”, „Suplimentul literar”, “The Voice of America”
and others. He shows his belonging to important professional organizations through the
position of member of the Academy of Sciences in New York, of the American Association of
Sociology and of the Romanian Association of Sociologists. He is a citizen of honour of Cluj-
Napoca and he received many diplomas from institutions of culture, national and international
and he was named various times Man of the year.
Cumulative personality, mixture of calm and frenzy, lover of literature and author of
the novel The Last Judgment (1994), Achim Mihu ingeniously explored and from various
angles the forms and the manifestations of the fields of traditional Romanian and international
culture. In a syntax of coherence of the scholarly model of the discreet intellectual, who hates
opportunist servitudes and provincial vanities, Achim Mihu is a conscience of the epoch and
of the place that with the mind and soul that penetrated multidimensional in the onto logic and
axiological essence of the human being, analyzing continually its metamorphosis in the
factual reality of life.

*
**

Great personalities who became famous – meaning well known, honoured or feared
by a country or by many countries can distinguish themselves, functionally or
dysfunctionally in different domains of the social reality. In order to show their prestige
and, eventually to maintain and increase it, those personalities are submitted not only to
the spontaneous reactions of an enthusiast mass, but also to a true politics of building and
reasoning their image.

– You are an important representative of the school of sociology and of the

university of Cluj. What thoughts and feelings do you have professor Achim Mihu, when
you step into the lecture rooms of the “Avram Iancu” University that you founded and
that you lead as rector from its foundation?
– I have to say from the beginning that the “Avram Iancu” University is indissolubly
connected to my name. It was officially founded in 1992, after a conversation I had with a
representative of the “Spiru Haret” University in Bucharest. A history professor from the
management of “Spiru Haret” University came to Cluj with the intention and mission to set
up a subsidiary, considering the rumors that this could be possible and to found a private
university in our city. I had a long conversation with him, in my apartment, on Cardinal Iuliu
Hossu Street. I was close to the academician Ştefan Pascu, professor at the “Babeş-Bolyai”
University. In these circumstances we agreed that a university with the name of Avram Iancu
would be welcomed and that the rector of the new university would be the academician Ştefan

4
Pascu. We were to establish in a future meeting the faculties and the deans. We did not know
that academician Ştefan Pascu had a “secret agenda” he presented in Bucharest - that being
that the new university would be a sort of subsidiary of “Spiru Haret” University. He was
close to professor Aurel Bondrea, rector of “Spiru Haret” University. After the first meeting of
the Senate of our University, when we established the faculties and the deans, two messengers
from the “Spiru Haret” University came to Cluj with the mission to declare us subsidiary of
this university, and to establish the rate of the tuition fee to be transferred to Bucharest. I
announced these intentions to the members of the management of the new university, when
the representatives of “Spiru Haret” University weren’t present. At the same time I stated my
critical opposition regarding the intentions to transform us into vassals of the “Spiru Haret”
University. This point of view won with almost absolute majority. Among the most ardent
supporters of the independence of the new university, besides myself, was professor Dumitru
Salade, who stated that he does not want to be part of a university led by the former staff chief
of the Ministry of Education. He resigned on the spot from the position of dean of the Faculty
of Social Pedagogy, planned at the same time with the other faculties and quit the meeting. I
proposed as dean in his place associate professor Voicu Lăscuş, a former student of mine.
If you know this episode from the history of the “Avram Iancu” University, you can
imagine why I always come in the buildings of our university with a discreet, but impossible
to hide feeling of founder.
Moreover, at the foundation of our university, we did not have any location. I was
concerned with the buying of the place, the arrangements and the inauguration of all the
buildings of the university (with one exception, in total four buildings evaluated today at tens
of billions of lei). All this is the result of saving and managing the money that came from the
tuition fees over the years. The feeling of active participation, I think I can say even decisive,
in the ascension of our university makes me have a special feeling of involvement and
participation. I feel as a teacher with vocation, but also a man of action and management.
If I were to tell what I have been through until today by devoting to “Avram Iancu”
University I could write a novel. There were fights for the university money, for the leading
positions, for the didactic degrees, for the positions of the management of the university
values. In all these years from the foundation of the university until now (about 15 years) I did
not make a fortune. I have as much as I had when the “Avram Iancu” University was founded:
an apartment where I live with my family, another apartment with 2 rooms in a block that I
have from my deceased parents and a rolled car. In the bank I have a small amount of money
that I keep for extreme situations.
– Which of the personalities you met in your personal and professional life
impressed you strongly or what personalities arose admiration in you that stimulated
you? What were the factors and the orientations that played an accelerator role in your
formation and evolution as sociologist?
– As pupil I had a teacher of Romanian language and literature who guided me
towards serious reading. Under his influence I read a lot. I was also lucky thanks to a friend of
mine, the best at that time, now professor Aurel Giurgiu from the “Babeş-Bolyai” University,
who had two brothers that were first in the class and who gathered a big library. I took the
books I read in the years ‘48-’49 from there. I owe in big part the proclivity towards
philosophy and sociology to Eugeniu Sperantia, who lived near the railway station, here in
Cluj, not far from where I lived with my family. I asked him for some books to read through
the agency of a woman living in the same village as my mother and who cleaned his house.
He sent me a book written with passion by Flamarion, on popularization of astronomy. The
sky was described as a mysterious paradise. Later on, I wrote a study on Social mechanics,
Spiru Haret’s book. I asked Eugeniu Sperantia to read it and to tell me if I could send it to the
“Philosophy Magazine”. He read it and he told me it was good, but he made a note, that

5
Sperantia is written with “t”, not the Romanian “ţ”. He told me his name was a Latin
translation of the name “Hope”, which his family who worked at “The Contemporary” had.
Eugeniu Sperantia looked like a saint and wore a black coat like a priest. He always had at his
neck a black bow tie and a white shirt. Once, later on, he showed me the flat where he lived
with his wife, so full of books that you did not have a spot to put your foot. The first work of
sociology that I read was his course of History of sociological thinking, taught at the Faculty
of Law in Oradea and Cluj. He gave me a book with dedication, which he told me he cared a
great deal for and which expressed the essence of his thinking - The social phenomenon as
spiritual process of education, book published at Oradea, in 1930. He wrote: “To Mister
Achim Mihu, with special affection and consideration. Professor Eugeniu Sperantia,
19.02.1966”. At the basis of his idea was spiritual elitism. Personalities gather around them
groups and nations, like a strong magnet. He carried out by making a reference to Mihail
Eminescu, that he considered the nucleus and the fundamental meaning of the Romanian
society.
– What were the main stages of the path you crossed towards perfection, in
profession, and in general, in life, outlining the frameworks of the professional
formation and an image, a perspective of your identity?
– The path of my professional formation is difficult. I wanted to apply to the Faculty
of External Relationships at the former Commercial Academy in Bucharest. The entire
education was reorganized and together with it, the faculty I wanted to apply to. In its place,
the Faculty of General Economy was founded, with duration of 4 years. When I graduated I
was sent in the superior education of Bucharest, at IMF Bucharest and to the Institute of
Physical Education. After a School of Assistant Professors I was named assistant professor in
social sciences at IMF Cluj and then I was transferred to the “Babeş-Bolyai” University. Step
by step I became associate professor and after that, university professor. I had my PhD thesis
at the University of Bucharest, with a former ambassador of Romania in France. I prepared
the PhD thesis all by myself and I received the mark very well, before it was presented to the
commission, from the academician professor Alexandru Roşca, an exigent personality,
objective and who pursued the interests and the prestige of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University
until his last breath.
The PhD thesis with the title Sociometrics was published as book and arose a special
interest, especially because it had as subject a problem very close to the human and not to his
forces or production relationships, which are not close to him. I talked about non-political
Microsociology, leaving aside Macrosociology, which is ideological through its essence. After
the success with my PhD thesis I received a scholarship in the USA, in the domain of the
problems of restricted groups. The persons who supported me were professor Alexandru
Roşca and especially professor Constantin Daicoviciu, at that time the rector of the “Babeş-
Bolyai” University, who was impressed with my thesis and with the fact that “I waited quietly
and realized a good thing”. After a year at Cornell University, a select private university,
situated in a picturesque and typical middle class area, I wrote a work on The American
sociology of restricted groups, which I believe was at the level of the sociology in the world
at that time, in 1968. After two years I was sent to New York as professor of the Department
of Romanian culture and civilization at the University of Columbia. After a few years I
received again a Fullbright scholarship, this time in Minnesota at the Minneapolis University.
The American vein in my sociological formation is obvious and the late professor George
Marica, one of the greatest sociologists of Cluj also recognized it.
– If you were to discern the main plans of your activity and career, pointing out at
the same time the accomplishments and the contributions that represent you, what
cardinal coordinates would they include and how would you arrange the elements of this
radiography? In a comprehensive synthesis, what themes would Achim Mihu insert in

6
the sociologic and anthropologic debate, themes that reunited outline in a distinctive
manner the man of culture and of spirituality Achim Mihu?
– What did I bring significant in the Romanian sociology? In the years 1970, I
appreciated the study of sociometric relationships, of attraction and rejection, researched by J.
Moreno. But I didn’t believe they were the result of a spontaneous, irrational “here and now”
reaction. I believed and I still believe that at their basis (on the basis of the Romanian
traditional thinking) are the value judgments on the model of the relationships of
neighborhood. I tested and popularized the methodology, the methods and the American
techniques and I wrote about the American sociology when in our country the historical
materialism was identified with scientific sociology, even by the leaders of the department of
philosophy of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University. I considered that the American experience
should be an example for the Romanian sociology. That is why I wrote two books with the
title The ABC of the sociological investigation, that some of the Romanian sociologists
thought it was much more than the title would cover. The implicit moral: if the ABC is so
exigent, then what can we say about the sociology itself? The first book of this work was
translated into Hungarian and published in Budapest. I had a talk on this subject with Miron
Constantinescu, regarded at that time as the mentor of the Romanian sociology. I didn’t
choose the public opinion, so used by our sociologists. I thought it was like a fashion and in
fact it isn’t more than that: a one-moment irrationality.
In the cultural anthropology I saw a way to resuscitate the Romanian sociology and I
asked myself worried about the destiny of the occidental culture. Let’s be reasonable, the
world has six billion and a half people. The occidental culture (Christianism, Americanism)
doesn’t represent more than about two billion people. What about the rest? The rest, in a
future demographic evolution, in a continuous growth of the population of the world could
become a danger that will not be stopped by any force.
In my professional life, besides sociology I got interested not only on the cultural
anthropology that I wrote a book upon – that reached the third edition, but also on culture
philosophy. I got close to philosophy especially thanks to D.D. Roşca, whose masterpiece was
The Tragic Existence. I proposed and I realized with Dacia Publishing House a re-editing of
that work, unchanged, exactly as it was known between the two World Wars. It was said by
some politrucs that it belonged to the Marxist ideology. I also proposed the re-editing of the
work of Grigore Popa on Kierkegaard and I wrote a foreword. Grigore Popa was a profound
and talented philosopher from Cluj. I had the honour to know Constantin Noica and Nicolae
Steinhardt, with whom I had secret and soul talks at Păltiniş and Rohia. They both reinforced
my trust in the Romanian culture. After the funeral of Constantin Noica I stayed in the church
of Păltiniş to have a talk with the late bishop of Sibiu, Antonie Plămădeală. He complained
that the night before the funeral of Noica, a group of “rebels” wanted to transform the funeral
into a political action. The bishop didn’t allow it, saying that the Metropolitan Seat was
burying Noica, not anyone else and that it was a blasphemy to transform a religious funeral of
such a great personality into a political game, even if it is realized very well. Then, at Păltiniş,
somebody cut the engine cooling tubes of my car, Dacia. On my way to Cluj, the engine
stopped. Somebody “punished” me. Steinhardt owed to Constantin Noica because he offered
him, thanks to the persons he knew, a select burial place in Rohia. After a few years he wrote
me that the world seems poorer without Noica.
After 1989, I lived the national drama of nihilism without principles. The situation was
getting close to the characteristics of proletcult. The sociology performed before that year had
been forgotten, as other accomplishments of the same period, which were minimized for the
sake of a so-called revolutionary servility.
– What is the theoretical guiding that influenced your career?

7
 – I was fascinated by the ideas structured in theories and especially the ones that had a
philosophical touch. I read with interest Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea, who struggled to put
Romania in dependency compared to the developed countries of the world. The work has two
movements: one of the developed countries that give the rhythm of the development of the
world and its meaning and the other, of the underdeveloped countries that follow with a
certain fatality the first ones. He had run from Russia to Romania and planned in a
paradoxical manner an entry in the civilized world at the same time with his country of origin,
Russia. Thanks to Gherea I met Titu Maiorescu, who taught me not to love imitation. I keep
this lesson in mind even today and I’m very sorry that we are imitators in everything and,
moreover, we are proud of it. Titu Maiorescu saw the development of our country as a way
proposed by our culture and not as Gherea used to say, through the imitation of the civilized
countries. Then, I have to admit, George Călinescu fascinated me. I read Black box several
times, with the dictionary by my side. I also loved D.D. Roşca, Lucian Blaga and Constantin
Noica.
– What are the satisfactions of the important results of your permanent efforts to
drill society in its multiple and profound layers?
– In my first years as teacher in the superior education, sociology existed only as
historical materialism, respectively as Marxism applied in the study of society. This is how
the leaders of the department of philosophy of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University thought the
problem. This is how the people who studied in the USSR acted (and they were not few) and
came back to write critical works regarding the sociology of the bourgeois. As for myself, I
reached the conclusion that there isn’t a Marxist sociology, unless we force things and, at the
same time, that in the contemporary society there are several sociological paradigms, but none
has the monopoly of truth. For this conclusion the members of the redaction of the magazine
“Sociological Research”, who liked to believe in only one sociological truth, criticized me. I
wrote an Introduction to sociology, in 1992, and I received for it the prize ”Dimitrie Gusti”
from the Romanian Academy. It is being published at this moment a sociology in two books
that takes again the ideas of the book awarded by the Academy. At the same time, the idea of
sociology of the contemporary world is very appealing to me, where an important place is
occupied by globalization and the aspirations for the hegemony of the world.
During a period of almost ten years I published articles in the magazines of Cluj
“Steaua” and “Tribuna”. With this occasion I got closer to the philosophical and sociological
pillar of the writers. Nicolae Manolescu wrote about me in an article published in “România
literară” with the title “A critic from sociology”. In this context I rediscovered Lucian Blaga
and I participated (and, in big part, I contributed) to the Blaga Festival in Sebeş, which
overpassed 20 editions. Each time I wrote and published an essay on the great lost and in love
with the Valley of the Beautiful. I met him in flesh and blood one time at the Central Library
of Cluj. I was reading Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea and I was trying to understand his
theory on the chances of socialism in the underdeveloped countries. I was fascinated about the
essential connection of Blaga with the places on the valley of Sebeş. As mentality, he is a
creation of the Romanian regions of the Tonei, Strungarilor, Lomanului, Nedeiului, Mirajului,
Ţăţului and Cugirului springs. In that period I wrote Meanders of truth, Lucian Blaga in The
cultured personality of the Romanian spirituality and The Master and the ivy. Among the
people I brought together with Gheorghe Maniu, the director of the House of Culture in
Sebeş, at the Blaga Festival were also Constantin Noica and Nicolae Steinhardt. They were
both very applauded in Sebeş and, I would say, very well protected.
– Your approaches distinguish globalization as multidimensional process,
globalism as ideology and globality as the totality of the actions that take place. What
impact does mondialization have on the social reality and how can it be redefined, under

8
the influence of the alterations that took place, the concept of social reality in this global
context?
– I am interested in globalization with a view of knowing and studying the
contemporary society. It is one of the most contested and complex problems in the domain of
social sciences and of human sciences. Sociologist Anthony Giddens proposed to look at
globalization as a disconnection of space and time, insisting on the fact that once the
possibility of instantaneous communication appeared, knowledge and culture can be shared
all over the world in the same time. David Harvey and James Mittelman also dealt with this
theory and they observed that globalization meant a “compression” of space and time, a
reduction of the world. Sociologist Manuel Castells thought that globalization could be
defined as a giant economy that has the capacity to act as a unity in real time at world scale.
Globalization had and still has profound consequences on the reality determined by
sociology as its object. First of all, a state of the social reality not known in the past, in the
classic or modern sociology, appeared. It’s the world reality. What is this reality, what is it
formed? The answer arises many problems and it was not given yet in such a way that we
could accept it without reservation. The question is: In what terms is this new reality with the
object of sociology? In the epistemology of sociology there is often a differentiation between
abstract and modern. By abstract we understand the theoretical domain, far from the concrete
reality or even opposed to it. So, concrete researches, not once, were deprived as the
preferential, serious and wanted domain of the sociological knowledge. But after the global
reality appeared, we ask where is the concrete (if it still exists)? After all, according to
globalization, reality regarded as unity of space and time, as present all over the world, it
seems it doesn’t appear anymore in the concrete reality, meaning “here and now”. This is
where, in my opinion, we have to define the local domain. But this local from the time of
globalization is not a particularization of the general, but a reality of another type, that does
not need the general. To this category belong the diversity of the civilizations and the
variations of cultures.
Also about globalization, it is necessary to be said that it is looked at as a whole, a
total of processes, a network of tendencies etc., that could assert itself and it could be used
directly with different consequences. In this context, different directions of appreciation of the
effects of globalization appeared. There was a time when globalization was over all looked at
as having a benefic role. Then it was acknowledged that it could also have negative
consequences on the development of democracy and equality between people. This is how
Joseph E. Stiglitz, owner of Nobel Award, sees things in his recent work - Making
Globalization Work. When he says globalization has to appear in order to act, to work, he
wants to say that it has to become much more positive, working in the favor of humans. He
says that for big part of the world, globalization, as it was managed until now, seems a pact
with the devil. “We have to make it work not only for the rich and powerful, but for everyone,
including the ones in the poor countries”. For Stiglitz, globalization is not inevitable, but it
could be slown down or changed in its content and in its functions. Out of good, respective
functional, it can become bad or evil. The important thing is to become benefic for the whole
world.