Notes taken in the course of the third re-reading of István Bibó

The author tells what motivated him to re-read the essays of Hungarian historian-philosopher István Bibó in different periods. He argues that there are differences between the occasional and the essential timeliness of someone's work. He applies four categories in the analyses of the 'dead end' historical periods of Hungarian history: the Dualist, and the Horthy-, the Rákosi- and the Kádár-eras as well as the deformed mentality that characterized those periods. The author also writes about Bibó's activity between the years 1945-1948 and in 1956. Using the four categories he concludes that after the political changes of 1989, the 'dead end' times seem to be over while the mentality deformations are still present.