Early life and education Born into a family of
Armenian origin in
Roșiești, a village in the former
Fălciu County, his parents were Iancu Bagdasar and his wife Smaranda (
née Aftenie). Another six siblings were born after him, and his mother died giving birth to her twelfth child, in 1911. His parents were affluent peasants at the top of village society; his father served five consecutive terms as mayor, amounting to twenty years. His mother was illiterate, but valued education and urged all her children to study. As he thought the teacher in Roșiești to be incompetent, his father sent Nicolae to attend primary school in nearby Idrici village, together with his older brother
Dumitru, to whom he was very attached. He then entered the prestigious
Gheorghe Roșca Codreanu High School in
Bârlad, graduating in 1916. He began publishing in
Neamul Românesc magazine in 1915, while still a student, signing as Bărdescu. While in Bârlad, he supported himself through tutoring. In October 1916, shortly after Romania entered
World War I, he began studying at the reserve officers' school in
Botoșani. From spring 1917 to March 1918, he fought on the front as a student master sergeant. He later recalled his wartime experiences in
Amintiri. Notații autobiografice, pointing out the absurdity and uselessness of many of the army's actions. He found that officers, rather than judging based on circumstances, hid behind regulations, and that the troops' activities were subject to little real oversight. In October 1918, near the war's end, he enrolled in the literature and philosophy faculty of the
University of Bucharest, graduating in 1922. Initially intending to study sociology, he changed his mind when he found that his professor
Ion A. Rădulescu-Pogoneanu did not know the material. Bagdasar then opted for the history of philosophy, taught by a youthful
Mircea Florian, whom he found erudite. While a student, he was an editor for
Gazeta Transilvaniei, a newspaper based in
Brașov, in the
newly acquired Transylvania region. Following graduation and with the help of
Mihai Popovici, he earned a scholarship at the
University of Berlin, where he studied from 1922 to 1926. At Berlin, he took courses with
Carl Stumpf,
Heinrich Maier and
Max Dessoir, and was active in the
Kant-Gesellschaft society. He also acquired a solid grounding in
Kantianism. He took his doctorate in 1926; it was titled
Der Begriff des theoretischen Wertes bei Rickert ("The Notion of Theoretical Value in
Rickert").
Early career in education Upon his return from Germany in September 1926, he was unable to find a university post, but was asked by the
Public Instruction Ministry to teach German at the Romanian commercial school in
Thessaloniki. He immediately accepted a job as substitute professor, teaching in the Greek city from that November until the following April. After his return home and until 1930, Bagdasar taught at the Nicolae Krețulescu Commercial School in
Bucharest; he also worked for ten years at the private Prince Carol high school. From autumn 1928 to spring 1930, he was a librarian at
Dimitrie Gusti's Romanian Social Institute. Bagdasar was able to enter university teaching in 1928: thanks to the insistence of department chairman
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, he was named assistant psychotechnician in the experimental psychology laboratory of the University of Bucharest. A year later, he agreed to teach a course on logic at a reduced salary. His acceptance was reluctant, as he did not wish to upset course professor
Nae Ionescu, who could attack him in
Cuvântul newspaper. In 1929, he thus became assistant lecturer of logic and epistemology, and remained in the post until 1941. He taught logic to preparatory-year students and epistemology to students in the other years. In 1938, when the department was restructured, he stopped teaching for two years and entered a competition for a history of philosophy post at
Cernăuți University, but was not hired. In early 1940, he was drawn into a plagiarism scandal involving Alexandru Posescu, who a year earlier had published an introduction to philosophy at Bagdasar's printing press. In late 1939, Nicolae Tatu accused Posescu of plagiarizing
P. P. Negulescu; Posescu sued Tatu in January 1940, and also named Bagdasar as the moral author of the allegations against him. Bagdasar was ultimately cleared in 1945.
Maturity and later years After Rădulescu-Motru was forced to retire in October 1940, during the
National Legionary State, Bagdasar became assistant to
Ion Petrovici, who had recently transferred to Bucharest from the
University of Iași. In December 1941, he was named administrator of
Casa Școalelor, the
Culture Ministry's publishing house. In the summer of 1942, he became a professor at Iași, in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics department, within the literature and philosophy faculty. The move was facilitated by Petrovici, by then Education Minister. He retained this post until March 1949, when, following the education reform enacted by the early
communist regime the previous year, he was assigned to be a scientific adviser at the Bucharest-based Institute of History and Philosophy. Politically uninvolved and left-leaning, his relations with Rădulescu-Motru and Petrovici, as well as his work at
Casa Școalelor, probably contributed to his removal. Meanwhile, in May 1943, upon the motion of Rădulescu-Motru, he was elected a corresponding member of the
Romanian Academy. When the communist authorities revamped the academy in 1948, he was
stripped of membership. In 1970, he was elected to the Academy of Social and Political Sciences. From 1949 to 1950, Bagdasar's work focused on the history of Romanian philosophy; he was then transferred to the history section of the academy's
Iași chapter, where he researched the history of Romanian literature. While there, he co-directed
Ethos magazine with
Ștefan Bârsănescu. Moving back to Bucharest in 1956, he delivered a eulogy the following March at
Bellu Cemetery for Rădulescu-Motru. He was somewhat marginalized during the 1950s and experienced a certain degree of poverty. He received a salary raise when he came to the national capital to work on
Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, but continued riding the tramway second class for a year, and bought black bread rather than baguettes. Bagdasar died in 1971. Streets in
Bârlad and
Focșani now bear his name. ==Work==