Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, later founder and President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, studied philosophy in the University of Vienna from 1872 to 1876, where he came under the powerful influence of Franz Brentano. We survey the role of Brentano’s philosophy, and especially of his ethics, in Masaryk’s life and work.

Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, later founder and President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, studied philosophy in the University of Vienna from 1872 to 1876, where he came under the powerful influence of Franz Brentano. We survey the role of Brentano’s philosophy, and especially of his ethics, in Masaryk’s life and work.

From the very beginnings of his thought, Thomas Garrigue Masaryk was convinced that modern man, and likewise the culturally and politically emancipated Czech nation, was in a deep existential crisis closely linked with the spread of irreligiosity. Masaryk gradually came to believe that this crisis could be positively overcome on two levels. On a theoretical level, he relied on his specific classification and systematization of the sciences. On a practical level, which was directly based on his (...) notion of positive sciences and a strictly rational scientific approach, it was a matter of developing a new direction and method, which he characteristically conceived of as realism. On the eve of the First World War, Masaryk’s position became understandably radicalized. He distanced himself from a more objectivist view of religion and countered theism with a scientific and philosophical anthropism. (shrink)

PREFACE Josef Novak The present volume describing and evaluating the writings and deeds of the philosopher, sociologist and statesman, Thomas Garrigue ...

This reflection examines the context of philosophical-ethical research and its preceding and continuing particular geopolitical framework in the central zone of Central Europe in the case of the national and state revival of the Czech nation. It focuses on the work and endeavour of František Palacký and its interpretive development by Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, which resulted in the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic. In this context, it finally outlines the significance of the dramatic Central European affairs since (...) the turn of 1989 to the Russian war on Ukraine. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Chapter I Modern Suicidism I WAS not yet ten years old when, for the first time, I began to think a great deal about suicide. Perhaps I had heard something ...

INTRODUCTION Substance of the modern ideal of humanity — Development of this ideal since the Reformation and the Renaissance — The ideal of naturalness and ...

1. Praktická filozofie na základě sociologie : etika --.

T. G. Masaryk and M. Romeris are certainly prominent personalities and great names in history. It would be hard to understand the Czech nation and the development of the state of Czechoslovakia without T. G. Masaryk’s philosophical views on person, nation, state, and his political activity; and it would be hard to understand certain aspects of the interwar Lithuania’s legal and political development without M. Romeris’ scientific heritage. These are the personalities, who have left a significant inheritance due (...) to their scientific, political and social activities. (shrink)

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Marian Zdziechowski are well-known personalities from the Czech and Polish cultural environments, respectively. Their lives and work had many parallels, one of which was their interest in Russia and Russian thought. In their time, they were unique connoisseurs of Russian philosophy. This article tries to insightfully compare their attitudes regarding this field. It first analyzes their cooperation in this area, then the importance of Russian philosophy in their work, what contacts they had with Russian (...) thinkers and how they perceived major personalities in field of Russian thought, about whom they wrote their works. Due to their different philosophical and political orientations, they perceived a number of issues differently, and, rather than a relationship of parallelism, we can therefore speak of the mutual complementarity of their study of Russian thought. (shrink)

Im Februar 1930 beschloß das Parlament der tschechoslowakischen Republik, Präsident Th. G. Masaryk aus Anerkennung seiner Verdienste um die Republiksgründung eine Summe von 20 Millionen Kronen zu widmen. Aus Dankbarkeit seinem philosophischen Lehrer Franz Brentano gegenüber ermöglichte Masaryk mit einem Teil dieser Summe im darauffolgenden Jahr die Gründung einer Brentano-Gesellschaft und eines Brentano-Archives in Prag unter der Leitung von Oskar Kraus. Der vorliegende Beitrag versucht die Vorgeschichte und die Geschichte der Gesellschaft bis zu ihrer endgültigen Auflösung im Jahre (...) 1955 und damit ein Stück vergessener Wissenschaftsgeschichte zu rekonstruieren. Besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf die Rolle gelegt, die die Brentano-Gesellschaft im Bemühen um den wissenschaftlichen Nachlaß Brentanos spielte. (shrink)

A decade after the fall of Communism in Europe, the Czech Republic'smembership in the European Union is still a matter of a relatively shortwaiting period of 4 years. Not so the imagination of this membership andthe creation of a political concept created to promote this goal: thespecific Central European policy initiated by Thomas G. Masaryk andrevitalized by Václav Havel. Despite the deep differences in thepolitical thought and philosophical orientations of both Presidents, notto mention the historic rupture of 41 (...) years of Totalitarianism, theirperceptions of Europe as an Imagined Community are identical. (shrink)

Brandt J.: Thomas G. Masaryk: Zum Gegenstand der Psycholgie. In: T. G. Masaryk und Brentano Schule. Beiträge zur gleichnamigen Symposium vom 15. – 17. October 1991. Praha, Graz 1992.

The paper discusses the perception of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work by Yuly Aykhenvald (1872–1928), a famous literary critic of the first quarter of the twentieth century. It shows that Aykhenvald’s attitude toward Dostoevsky had undergone a certain evolution from a rejection via demands to “overcome” him to his recognition as one of the “spiritual leaders” of the thinking Russia alongside Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. Yet Aykhenvald still had some controversy with Dostoevsky, above all over philosophy of history. The ques­tion of Russia’s (...) destiny and its relation to the West is addressed by Aykhenvald following the same algorithm that is used in the article by Thomas G. Masaryk (to which Aykhen­vald was reacting), namely through the prism of and in dispute with Dostoevsky. The pa­per proves that Aykhenvald focuses not on interpreting or analyzing Masaryk’s ideas, but on refuting the views of the Eurasianists and that Eurasian ideas are the very philosophi­cal context that serves as a background for his argument with Dostoevsky. In refuting Dostoevsky’s views on Europe and justifying his own historiosophic view of the entire world as a unified Europe, Aykhenvald eventually comes to the paradox that Dostoevsky, being the “denier of Europe”, is the “intercultural cross-link” that ties Europe and Russia even more closely together. In this way, Dostoevsky’s work turns out to be a starting point for Aykhenvald’s own historiosophic framework, which brings him closer to both Russian interpreters of the Silver Age (Vikentii V. Veresaev) and the European philosoph­ical and political tradition (Thomas G. Masaryk). (shrink)

The book under review is a translation of a monograph written in Czech entitled Nikolaj Losskij: Obhájce mystické intuice, published in 2011. As a theologian, the author is above all interested in the spiritual and theological aspects of Lossky’s thought. The first two chapters are concerned with Lossky’s life and work before and during his years in Czechoslovakia. The third chapter is devoted to the analysis and interpretation of Lossky’s booklet Mystical Intuition published in English in 1938, wherein Lossky presents (...) his theory of mystical intuition, as opposed to his theories of sensory and intellectual intuition. The last chapter is about Lossky’s conception of the self and of society, his interpretation of Dostoevsky, his theory of reincarnation, and his relationship with Ctibor Bezděk, who applied Lossky’s philosophy to medical practice. Since the book was written by a Czech author who has insider-knowledge of the literature written in Czecho-Slovak, most interesting for the reader unacquainted with this family of languages is the discussion of Lossky’s relationships—personal and intellectual—with Czech and Slovak philosophers such as Tomáš Masaryk, Ferdinand Pelikán, Vladimír Hoppe, Ctibor Bezděk, and Igor Hrušovský, as well as the discussion of Lossky’s publications in Czech. Given that the latter aspects are what is truly unique to this book and novel in the Anglophone literature on Lossky, this is what I focus on in this review. (shrink)

It is somewhat misleading to think of the Franciscans as forming a “school” in ethics, since there was a fair bit of diversity among Franciscans. Nonetheless, one can identify certain characteristic tendencies of Franciscan moral thought, and certain “celebrity” Franciscans whose views in ethics and moral psychology are particularly noteworthy. I shall first offer an overview of the general character of Franciscan moral thought in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and then turn to a more detailed examination of (...) the thought of John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and William Ockham (c. 1288-1347) on three central matters of debate: the nature of the virtues, the relationship between intellect and will, and the relationship between moral requirements and the divine will. (shrink)