László Kontler

I am a historian born, raised and educated in Budapest, but my academic experience has been shaped by a great deal of time spent at universities and research centers across Europe and in North America. I have taught at the universities of Debrecen and Budapest (ELTE), as well as at Rutgers University (New Brunswick), but CEU has been my main institutional home since the first masters’ program in history in 1992. After more than twenty years, and having served the university in diverse capacities, I am still thrilled by the sense of the intellectual and socio-cultural adventure it represents for all members of the community.
Though my internationally best known work is probably a full-scale history of Hungary (which I wrote almost by accident), my specific background is in European intellectual history in the early-modern period and the Enlightenment. This was a quite unusual choice for a historian in Hungary in the 1980s, when I took my degrees and my career began (it has become less so in the meantime). My early inspirations were both "Cambridge" (linguistic contextualism) and "Bielefeld" (Begriffsgeschichte); I have done quite a bit of work on the history of political thought (in Western and Central European contexts). From the later 1990s, this became increasingly combined with the study of the history of historical discourses, and of the phenomenon of translation and reception in the history of ideas. My next book, scheduled for publication in May 2014, is on the reception of the Scottish historian William Robertson in the 1760s to 1790s in Germany, as a case study on the potentials and limitations of intellectual communication across cultural and linguistic frontiers within the enlightened “republic of letters”, and as a contribution to discussions about the unity versus diversity of the European Enlightenment. This project, of course, has implied the study of "doing history" as an emerging discipline and as a scholarly and academic practice in the eighteenth century, which has inspired an interest in practices of scholarship more broadly, and the contexts and agendas which shape the production of scientific knowledge. These more recent interests of mine have been very much motivated by communicating and working with an international group of scholars who do history of science "proper" (which, having always had poor grades in science subjects, I shall never be able to claim to be doing). My latest fascination is with the eighteenth-century Viennese imperial astronomer Maximilian Hell, whose figure and career provides an excellent opportunity to study the non-scientific (political, cultural, professional and other) determinants in whose intersection knowledge is cultivated, as well as knowledge strategies whereby scientists may relocate themselves on the complex map defined by such determinants.
My teaching and thesis supervising activity also ranges across the topics emphasized in bold above, including neighboring areas. My recent courses include history and theory of historiography; history of political thought in the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century (in particular the interplay between political discourse and ideas and practices of "governmentality"); and "negotiating knowledge" in spatial and temporal contexts between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Courses taught by László Kontler
Theses supervised by László Kontler
Publications
Kontler, L.. "Királyság, rendiség és alkotmányosság: korona, tanácsok, bíróságok, parlamentek Angliában és Nagy-Britanniában." In A kora újkor története, edited by J. Poór, 211-234. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2009.
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Kontler, L.. "Forradalom a parlament ellen: az észak-amerikai brit gyarmatok elszakadása és az Egyesült Államok megszületése." In A kora újkor története, edited by J. Poór, 140-163. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2009.
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Kontler, L.. "Felvilágosult tudás és birodalom: megközelítések." In Tanulmányok Sahin-Tóth Péter emlékére, edited by T. O. Lilla Krász, 553-562. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, 2008.
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Kontler, L.. "Time and Progress – Time As Progress: An Enlightened Sermon by William Robertson." In Given World and Time. Temporalities in Context, edited by Tyrus Miller, 195-220., 2008.
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Kontler, L., and B. Trencsényi. "Hungary." In European Political Thought 1450-1700 : Religion, Law and Philosophy, edited by G. B. S. H. and Howell Lloyd, 176-207. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
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Kontler, L.. "Felvilágosult patriotizmus Közép-Európában: vázlat." In Tanulmányok Péter Katalin 70. születésnapjára, edited by P. T. Gabriella Erdélyi, 763-776. Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 2007.
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Kontler, L.. "Veszélyben a köztársaság? Burke és Gentz az európai ancien régime közösségének védelmében." In Angliától Nagy-Britanniáig. Magyar kutatók tanulmányai a brit történelemről, edited by Frank Tibor, 133-150. Budapest: Gondolat, 2004.
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Kontler, L.. "Nemes és nemtelen vademberek. Civilizáció és faj Georg Forster Utazás a világ körül című művében (1777)." In A szabadság értelme – az értelem szabadsága. Filozófiai és eszmetörténeti tranulmányok, edited by Dénes Iván Zoltán, 269-284. Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 2004.
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Kontler, L.. "La république en danger: Burke and Gentz to the Rescue of the Old Regime Commonwealth of Europe." In CEU History Department Yearbook 2001-2002, edited by I. G. T. Jaroslav Miller, 67-88. Budapest: Ceu, 2002.
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Kontler, L.. "Mahometan Christianity: Islam and the English Deists." In Frontiers of Faith. Religious Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities 1400-1750, edited by I. G. T. Eszter Andor, 107-120. Budapest: Ceu, 2001.
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Kontler, L.. "Superstition, Enthusiasm and Propagandism: Burke and Gentz on the Nature of the French Revolution." In Propaganda. Political Rhetoric and Identity 1300--2000, edited by T. T. Bertrand Taithe. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1999.
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Kontler, L.. "The conservative Enlightenment and the eighteenth-century recovery of European self-confidence." In CEU History Department Yearbook 1997-1998, 113-134. Budapest: Ceu, 1999.
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Kontler, L.. "Insisting on utopia: in memoriam Péter Hanák." In CEU History Department yearbook. 1997/98, 7-10. Budapest: Ceu, 1999.
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Kontler, L.. "Polishing Liberalism: Reflections on Matthew Arnold and Cultural Policies Applicable to a Gründerzeit." In CEU History Department Yearbook 1994-95, 39-50. Budapest: Ceu, 1996.
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Kontler, L.. "A törvények szelleméről." In Harminchárom fontos filozófiai mű, 175-188. Budapet: Móra, 1995.
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Kontler, L.. "“1640” and “1776”." In Ötven nagyon fontos évszám, edited by János Poór, 192-199, 229. Budapest: Lord, 1995.
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Kontler, L.. "Az egyenlõk birodalmától az egyenrangú nemzetekig. Érvek és ellenérvek az amerikai gyarmatosok és az anyaország vitájában." In Morál és politika határán, edited by Ludassy Mária, 83-106. Budapest: Elte, 1994.
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Kontler, L.. "Edmund Burke and the late Enlightenment in England and in Central Europe." In CEU History Department Yearbook, 47-65. Budapest: Ceu, 1994.
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Kontler, L.. "John Locke and the tradition of liberal natural law." In Transactions of the Seventh International Congress on the Enlightenment, 1729-1732. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1989.
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Kontler, L.. "Toleration and the image of Islam in early Enlightenment English thought." In Sous le signe des Lumières : articles rédigés à l'occasion du VIIe congrès international des Lumières, edited by Éva H. Balázs, 6-26. Budapest: Elte, 1987.
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Kontler, L.. "Politikaelmélet, dicsőséges forradalom és alkotmányos rendezés 1688-ban." In Tanulmányok a XVI-XVIII. századi egyetemes történelem köréből, edited by L. K. Tünde Mikes, 75-106. Budapest: Elte, 1984.
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Kontler, L.. "Alapításmítoszok és történeti reflexió – millenniumi számvetés.", no. 3 (2001): 274-283.
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Kontler, L.. "Köztársaság és utópia.", no. 5 (1993): 662-674.
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Kontler, L.. "Hogyan lett Budapest fõváros?", no. 1 (1984): 25-32.
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Kontler, L.. Kora újkori egyetemes történeti lexikon, Edited by János Poór. Budapest: Maecenas, 1996.
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Kontler, L.. John Locke: Értekezés a polgári kormányzatról. Budapest: Gondolat, 1986.
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Kontler, L.. John Locke és a liberális természetjogi hagyomány. Budapest: Gondolat, 1986.
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Kontler, L.. "H. Balázs Éva (1915-2006)." Élet és irodalom 9, no. March 3 (2006).
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Kontler, L.. "Hanák Péter utópiája." Élet és irodalom, no. 28 August (1998).
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