Name Zoltan Deme | Role Writer | |
Books Chords of Scales: Selected Fictions, Essays, and Studies | ||
Zoltan Deme, also known as Zoltan Deme or Zoltan Demme (May 31, 1949), American philosopher, philosophical anthropologist, aesthete, writer, composer, movie director, actor.
Contents
His philosophy
Native Hungarian Zoltan Deme, in 1984, presented a new approach to the general philosophical problems and created a quite new philosophical system. After his immigration to the United States, his book (Struggling against the Absurdity of Human Existence) was translated to the major languages and sold out world-wide. Applying his thorough knowledge in the fields of the history of both Eastern and Western theoretical thinking, in this book he turned the traditional basic oppositions of philosophy (matter vs. spirit, materialism vs. idealism, possibility of knowledge vs. impossibility of knowledge, and so on) to one ultimate opposition (possibility of humanization of the world vs. impossibility of humanization of the world).
Designation of the humanization as prime principle when uniting varied ontological, gnoseological, epistemological, and other aspects of philosophy, locates his system close to the philosophical anthropology.
His other activities
For centuries, philosophy was a synthesizer of other sciences and philosophers were polyhistors. Zoltan Deme keeps this tradition.
First, he is equally active in the field of the aesthetics (e.g. resolving some acut problems of the perception of the minimal art poetry) in the field of the art history (e.g. revealing some secrets of Piet Mondrian) in the field of the ethnography (e.g. presenting in each article more than specific ethnographic details: odd behavior and strange way of thinking of people of micro-civilizations) and in the field of the travel writing (e.g. the diary of his hichhiking is a continuation of the beatnik and hippie literature led by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Corso). Besides, he conducts and writes performance plays, and sometimes he makes even some movie acting.
Second, he believes that the theoretical and artistic creations always must be accompanied with everyday practical efforts. Therefore, he has organized and managed international service groups acting in varied social and economic areas, struggling mainly with world problems (e.g. starvation, abuse of poor people, mass manipulation, and so on) and having the longer or shorter time collaboration of Friedrich Durrenmatt, Norman Mailer, Willy Brandt, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Yehudi Menuhin, Audrey Hepburn and others.
Third, he prefers interactivity and common work. As degreed filmdirector (and former filmdirector of the Hungarian State Television) he stores his completed feature films in his website in divX format for years (having Lucille Bliss, Jennifer Darling, Andre Landzaat, Walker Edmiston, and others appeared in the movies) and discusses the final development of these films with fans and experts before making release (The Beyond, Promised Land). Same thing he does with his operas, with his ballets, and other music compositions (Torquemada, Barabbas).
However, these rainbow scale activities always contain one principal path. It is his perpetual monitoring the tragic features of the human status. Monitoring the death, the passage of time, the lifetime bondage to the same body and soul, and many other restrictive peculiarities of our status. As Zoltan Deme thinks, the true humanists have to front these fatal factors, have to search for methods to cease them or have to reduce their presence and influence. Similarly, humanists have to front those restrictive elements of our status also, what we people create in our societies. He does these things decades long, and as a synthesis of his all philosophical, artistic, and practical activities, at the end point of his path many well elaborated new world models appear (Promotion One, Promotion Two).