András Lányi and the Problem of Human-Scale Politics

Introduction András Lányi is a Hungarian writer, philosopher, public intellectual, retired university instructor, and one of the important figures of Hungarian ecological political thought. He founded the Master’s Department of Human Ecology at ELTE’s Faculty of Social Sciences, where he has taught ecology and political ecology. His essay Menekülés a győztesek táborából — roughly, Flight from the Camp of the Victors — is not a standard green politics essay. It is not mainly about emissions targets, renewable energy, recycling, ESG, biodiversity, or the usual vocabulary of contemporary environmentalism. Its real target is deeper: the political, moral, and civilizational order that makes ecological destruction appear useful, rational, and even inevitable. “Ecological criticism is at least as well suited to conceal as to disclose the real connections underlying the crisis of late modern industrial societies. It is as though we had to contend merely with something else altogether, with…