Recalling Masaryk’s The Czech Question. Humanity and Politics on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century

0572519 - FLÚ 2024 NL eng M - Monography Chapter
Svoboda, Jan - Prázný, A.
Introduction.
Recalling Masaryk’s The Czech Question. Humanity and Politics on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century. Leiden: Brill, 2023 - (Svoboda, J.; Prázný, A.), s. 1-3. ISBN 978-90-04-53490-2
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : The Czech Question * Masaryk * humanity * politics * small nation * twenty-first century
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004534919_002

In The Czech Question Masaryk expressed his political programme in philosophical terms. He showed that democratic politics are necessarily humanistic politics, i.e. politics that rest on the conscious accountability of individuals to society as a whole, and he showed that this ethos must be based on science and a critical perspective. The Czech question is therefore, in Masaryk’s view, an expression of the humanistic and thus generally human ideal in concrete form within the Czech historical-political context. In this respect, the humanistic universalism that Masaryk promoted is manifested as a concrete and constant confrontation of the current state of affairs with the ideas by which we measure ourselves. The fulfilment of this ideal does not just mean respect for our historically most noticeably intellectual tradition, an ideological heritage that, as a generally valid historical legacy, must be systematically carried on and cultivated. This rational and critical outlook also ultimately has pressing existential ramifications for theoretical knowledge: it asks a question about the nature and meaning of Czech philosophy itself.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0343406