Born in Giurgiu to a Jewish family, he completed his primary and secondary education in the city, attending the Gheorghe Lazăr High School. Around 1910, he began writing poetry — which he never published. In 1915, Vianu became a student at the Department of Philosophy and Law at the University of Bucharest. During the period, Vianu began attending Alexandru Macedonski's Symbolist literary circle, and, in 1916, he published a study on Macedonski and later his own verses in Flacăra magazine. Upon Romania's entry in World War I, he was drafted into the Romanian Army, trained as an artillerycadet in Botoşani, and took part in the Moldavian campaign. In 1918, he returned to Bucharest, where he was editor of Macedonski's Literatorul, and resumed his studies, graduating in 1919. Vianu also worked on the editorial staff for Constantin Rădulescu-Motru's Ideea Europeană and for Luceafărul. In 1921, he began his long collaboration with Viaţa Românească, while he contributed to Eugen Lovinescu's Sburătorul. In 1923, he obtained a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, with the thesis Das Wertungsproblem in Schiller Poetik, his first major study in aesthetics. The work was praised by Lucian Blaga, who was subsequently Vianu's colleague during their time as staff members for Gândirea; the two shared an appreciation of Expressionism. With Blaga, he stood for Gândirea's early modernist tendencies, and grew opposed to Nichifor Crainic's intense advocacy of traditionalism. With the publishing of his Dualismul artei in 1925, Vianu secured his place in the cultural landscape of modern Romania, and became the titular professor of aesthetics at the University of Bucharest. At around the same period, he distanced himself from Gândirea, and instead advocated democratic government. Throughout the interwar period, Vianu was an adversary of the fascistIron Guard, and polemized with its press. His status as a professor was in peril during the, and he felt the imminent danger of physical assaults. Anti-Semitic authorities began alluding to his Jewish origins, and several violent remarks were aimed at him. Following the Legionary Rebellion and the Guard's defeat, he sent a congratulatory telegram to Conducător Ion Antonescu. In 1945, after the end of Antonescu's regime and World War II, he was the recipient of a letter from his friend Eugène Ionesco: the document forms a list of intellectuals whom Ionesco harshly criticized for their pro-Iron Guard activism. In charge of Romania's National Theater in 1945, ambassador to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, Vianu was an honorary member of the Romanian Academy starting in 1955. He made several concessions to the new Communist authorities, which Ion Vianu has described as "purely formal". He gave active support to literary figures who, as former members of the Iron Guard, faced imprisonment — Vianu was a defense witness in the trial of Traian Herseni, and, with Mihai Ralea, the author of an appeal for the release of Petre Ţuţea. During his late years, he translated several of William Shakespeare's works into Romanian. In the beginning of summer 1964, he completed Arghezi, poet al omului, carrying the subtitle Cântare Omului, a work inthe field of comparative literature. It began printing on the very day of its author's death, which was due to a heart attack.
Philosophy
Vianu's investigations into cultural history, coupled with his vivid interest in the sociology of culture, allowed him to develop an influential philosophy, which attributed culture a seminal role in shaping human destiny. According to his views, culture, which had liberated humans from natural imperatives, was an asset that intellectuals were required to preserve by intervening in social life. In his analysis of the Age of Enlightenment and 19th-century philosophy, Vianu celebrated Hegel for having unified the competing trends of universalistRationalism and ethnocentricHistoricism. A sizable part of his analysis was focused on the modern crisis of values, which he attributed to the inability of values to impose themselves on all individuals, and which he evidenced in the ideas of philosophers as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Søren Kierkegaard.
