Timothy POGACAR (Bowling Green State University) The liberal category of self in the Slovene writer and politician Ivan Tavčar's thinking This presentation will explore the concept of self that the leading Slovene liberal politician Ivan Tavčar (1851–1923) sets forth in his literary works. Assuming that any form of liberalism must take as its point of departure a view of the individual, and individualism is based on a definition of personal identity, this paper will describe Tavčar’s imaginative descriptions of personhood. Tavčar was a staunch proponent of free expression of Slovenhood (slovenstvo), but before answering the question of what it means to be Slovene—in the nineteenth century or today—one must determine the meaning of personhood. In this regard I adopt the views of Marya Schechtman on the importance of narrative to personhood and the tripartite definition of concept of self offered by Jerrold Seigel (2005). Understandings of liberalism and nation and ethnicity in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (e.g., Janos 2000; Heiszler 2006), as well as characterizations of Tavčar as a liberal politician (e.g., Bergant 2001; Perovšek 1996) will provide background for my consideration of select works by Tavčar. This is appropriate historico-political information, given the tension between (in this case Slovene) nationalism and empire in nineteenth-century Europe. At the same time, of course, liberals in many lands were supporters of empire by virtue of the fact that it was the largest employer of educated people. Slovene liberals like Tavčar conformed to this portrayal. However, Tavčar primarily suggests a definition of personhood in works set not in the contemporary empire but during the Reformation and Counterreformation. While his present political opponent and target—typical of liberals in many European lands— was in the first place the Roman Catholic clergy, the relevant imagined context is a historically removed theocracy. This is where he works out a concept of self, an important aspect of which is ―free-thinking.‖ Protestantism is thus for Tavčar not simply a historical period of interest because it marks, in standard accounts, the birth of the Slovene people by the recording of its language in Biblical translation. Protestantism is a metaphor for modern liberalism with concommitant beliefs about personhood. This parallel is surprisingly constant in Tavčar’s historical works, from the long short story ―Vita vitae meae‖ (1883), which coincides with his early political activity, to his final novel, Visoška kronika (1920). The parallel is reinforced by geographic constants in these works, most of which have strong autobiographical links.
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