Hungarian philosopher and writer Gáspár Miklós Tamás has died at the age of 74. Literary website litera.hu announced the news on Sunday.
A key figure of the democratic opposition in the era of Communist leader János Kádár, the academic-turned politician took part in a meeting of opposition groups in Monor in 1985 and went on to become an MP of the Free Democrats in Hungary’s first post-communist, freely elected parliament from 1990-1994. He headed the party’s National Board between 1992 and 1994 before quitting the liberal party in 2000. From 1989, Gáspár Miklós Tamás was associate professor at the Department of Philosophy at Budapest’s ELTE University before becoming a senior associate at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since 2007, he was a visiting professor at the Central European University (CEU). He later became involved in environmental politics. In 2005, Gáspár Miklós Tamás was awarded the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary “in recognition of his outstanding scientific and educational work, as well as his activities in journalism and public life”. In 2016, he returned the award. In 2020, he was made an honorary citizen of Budapest.