Miklós Tamás Gáspár, a philosopher, opposition publicist, former representative of the Free Democrats Association, died at the age of seventy-four due to a long-term, serious illness.
The writer was a member of the underground opposition of the Kádár regime, an important figure in the regime change, a conservative-liberal parliamentary representative, and then he gradually distanced himself from party politics, and as a researcher and publicist, he was a popular author and publicist of Western Marxist literature.
Miklós Tamás Gáspár spoke as a guest of Partizán last October about his incurable illness and his will to live, and that he went to the National Oncology Institute for treatment.
His life journey
Miklós Tamás Gáspár (TGM) was born on November 28, 1948 in Cluj. His father is the writer Gáspár Tamás, the director of the Cluj State Hungarian Theater, his mother is the surgeon Erzsébet Krausz from Nagyvárad, one of the founders of the Romanian Communist Party.
He earned a philosophy degree at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj in 1972, where he was a student of György Bretter.
He was the editor of a literary magazine until 1978, after which he settled in Hungary. Until 1980, he taught at the Faculty of Arts of ELTE as a research assistant in the history of philosophy department, but lost his job due to his "oppositional behavior". He was expelled from Romania in 1981. He was then a visiting professor at Yale University in the USA, and then taught at English and French universities.
One of the best-known members of the democratic opposition of the Kádár era. In 1985, he participated in the meeting of opposition groups in Monor.
In 1989, as a candidate of the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), he entered the one-party parliament in the 14th electoral district of Budapest, replacing the recalled and resigned representative, Péter Várkonyi. From 1988 to 1990, he was the manager of the SZDSZ, and from 1992 to 1994, he was the president of the party's National Council. Member of Parliament from 1990 to 1994. He left the SZDSZ in 2000.
From 1989, he was an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Law of ELTE, then a senior associate at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since 2007, he has been a visiting professor at the Central European University (CEU).
Since 2002, he has been the vice president of ATTAC Hungary. In 2008, one of the founders of the Social Charter. In 2009, the Green Left Party candidate for the European Parliament (EP); on October 23 of this year, he was awarded the Twenty Years of the Republic Award. From May 2010 until the dissolution of the party, he held the post of president of the Green Left Party; this position he himself later called purely symbolic.
