Petre Țuțea

Petre Țuțea (; 6 October 1902 – 3 December 1991) was a Romanian philosopher, journalist, and economist.

Biography

Early years and the Legionary Movement

Petre Țuțea was born in the village of Boteni, Muscel County (now in Argeș County). His father, Petre Bădescu, was a Romanian Orthodox priest and his mother, Ana Țuțea, was of peasant stock. In 1920, after the Union of Transylvania with Romania, Țuțea left his village to finish high school in Cluj and went on to study law at the University of Cluj. After graduating, he obtained in 1929 a Ph.D. in Administrative Law, also at the University of Cluj.

Țuțea moved to Bucharest and in 1932 he founded, together with Petre Pandrea, a leftist newspaper, "Stânga" ("The Left"), that was quickly and forcefully closed by the government. Although he was familiar with Marxist writings in his youth, he rejected it and later became a devout Orthodox Christian. According to various published interviews of that time, Țuțea felt democracy would have not guaranteed the sovereignty of the Romanian people. He then was a director of the research office in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. As the National Legionary State was proclaimed in 1940, he was a member of the Romanian delegation to Moscow for economic negotiations. He returned after the National Legionary State was abolished (after January 1941). In May 1941 he was awarded the Order of the Star, Knight rank.

As the war against the Soviet Union began in June 1941, he asked to be sent to the front, but his request was refused. After he was released in 1953, and unable to find work, he lived with friends and relatives.

A very popular book (sold in more than 70,000 copies) is 322 de vorbe memorabile, a collection of aphorisms taken from various interviews, ordered alphabetically. In these interviews Țuțea adopted a hyperbolic, rhetorical style and the editor's choices included several controversial topics, such as atheism, Communism, and Antisemitism. He generally adopts a hardline Orthodox Christian point-of-view, being critical of various groups, including atheists (whom he names "weasels"), communists (naming communism a "social cancer") and Jews (whom he finds responsible for the existence of antisemitism).

A street in Iași and a school in Boteni bear his name. In 2017, a hall at Aiud Prison was dedicated to his memory; the Petre Țuțea Hall is a space intended for educational and psychosocial assistance activities in support of inmates.