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E-Book) DOI 10.47376/Filosofia.2013.2 Předmluva ;hWp_cAe^|a >[Whj^WdZ>eh_ped 9kbjkhWb?Z[dj_joWdZ=beXWb>kcWd_jo_d9p[Y^F^_beief^o 1 Předmluva Published under the auspice of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and in cooperation with the Offi ce of the Government of the Czech Republic 1 Vynález věcí 2 Předmluva Erazim Kohák Hearth and Horizon Cultural Identity and Global Humanity in Czech Philosophy 3 Vynález věcí 4 Předmluva Erazim Kohák Hearth and Horizon Cultural Identity and Global Humanity in Czech Philosophy Praha 2019 5 Vynález věcí The volume was made possible by the support of the Centre of Global Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University in Prague (LC06013) Reviewed by Prof. PhDr. Miloslav Bednář, CSc. and PhDr. Martin Šimsa, PhD. If you wish to order this volume please contact the publishing house FILOSOFIA at the following postal address and e-mail: Filosofia, Jilská 1, Prague 1, Czech Republic [email protected] © Erazim Kohák, 2008 Second edition Cover © Václav Pišoft, 2008 Photo © Alexandr Hudeček © , 2013 publishing house of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic ISBN 978-80-7007-402-2 (print book) ISBN 978-80-7007-587-6 (e-book) DOI 10.47376/filosofia.2013.2 6 Předmluva Table of Contents Preface 11 Introductory Ideas of Philosophy, Dreams of a Nation 17 Chapter One The People of the Chalice 27 Chapter Two Reason and Romance of Nation Building 51 Chapter Three The Edge of Modernity 71 Chapter Four The first philosopher: T. G. Masaryk 93 Chapter Five The Crucible of Praxis 117 Chapter Six The Unacceptable and the Inevitable 143 Chapter Seven The Other Philosopher: Jan Patočka 165 Chapter Eight Gray Naught and the Green Horizon 195 7 Vynález věcí Conclusion Cultural Identity in a Global World 217 Literature cited 231 Index of Topics 235 Index of Names 241 8 Preface Dedicated to all who shared my life but not my language 9 Hearth and Horizon 10 Preface Preface In this somewhat unconventional volume I should like to offer an intimate introduction to the philosophic struggles which shaped our Czech band of pilgrims through time into the cultural community we call a nation. I am not concerned with “nation” in the Anglo-Saxon sense of a state with its govern- ment, territory, inhabitants and political passions. I am concerned with a people who, by shared memories, struggles and hopes, have forged a distinc- tive cultural community, regardless of the jurisdiction under which they may reside in any given period. Because I am convinced that my people, as much by accident of history as by any virtue, drew heavily on philosophy in forming their self-understand- ing, I found myself speaking about Czech philosophy rather more than a casual reader might expect. That philosophy, however, is no idle speculation but an earnest coping with the vicissitudes of turbulent times. It is intelli- gible only against the background of Czech history. Consequently, I found myself speaking about Czech history rather more than a professional phi- losopher might expect, telling the story of Czech wandering through the centuries since our mildly miraculous rebirth some two hundred years ago. The result of that double need is inevitably unconventional, drawing on the skills of a philosopher and of a narrator, a teller of tales. A challenging blend, for writer and reader alike.1 1 About the explanatory notes: The purpose of this book is to offer the reader an insider’s view of our grappling with our Czech identity, normally hidden behind the curtain of an impenetrable language. It is an essay, not a textbook. Accord- ingly, I have sought to make the text as self- explaining as possible, weighing it down with a bare minimum of footnotes, scholars’ joy and the bane of readers. For the curious, there is always the excellent and urbane Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold (New York, Hill and Wang 1997) or Derek Saver’s eminently readable The Coasts of Bohemia (Princeton, Princeton University Press 1998). Both are readily available in paperback, both new and used, to satisfy the inquiring reader. – How- ever, for readers who are interested but not that interested – Peter Demetz’s book is 455 pages long – it seemed a matter of common courtesy to offer some fragments 11 Hearth and Horizon I was drawn to the task proximately by a wish and a need to share some- thing more than our slick tourist image with those who enrich our lives but do not share our intimate language. I sought to open for them something of my land and my people, of what we have lived, hoped and lost. Not the out- ward and visible manifestations, Prague Castle and the University, our throb- bing capital Prague and the peaceful baroque squares of our provincial towns. Those are familiar enough. I wanted share the inward and invisible reality, the many conflicted meanings which have gone into making us who we are. My second need was personal – to straighten it all out in my own mind. I have coped with the meaning (if any) of Czech identity for three score years and ten, a lifetime that included wars, revolutions, exile but also the tangible goodness of the most ordinary of everyday love and labour. We, our land, our people have lived all that. How to make sense of it, if at all? At times it did seem, in Shakespeare’s words, as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.2 What does it all mean, if anything, and how does that meaning flow and flex in the vicissitudes of history? That ever changing, ever living meaning is for me the reality of who we are, much as the word is the meaning of these marks on paper. It is inward, but not, I think, altogether invisible, or my task should be vain. We can over- look it amid our busyness, as we overlook a forest for the trees. If, though, we change our focus from all the many manifestations to the rhyme and reason embodied in them, their meanings can begin to emerge before us with in- creasing clarity. Then we can set about the business of philosophy – clearly seeing and critically articulating the meaning structures of what we live. Truth for me is not a matter of mystic uncovering or a-letheia, as the heirs of German idealism would have it. In the tradition of Masaryk’s Austrian – and specifically Czech – positive philosophy, I think it a matter of seeing that ongoing, ever changing process, though of seeing made possible by a shift of focus from particulars to the meaning structures embodied in them our particular words and actions. Only by seeing can we see, not phantasise; only by so shifting focus can we not only know but understand. Not, to be sure, once and for all. Life is not a steady state, it is a dynamic process, ever changing, ever passing like the snows of yesteryear, ever re- of what Czech calls, quaintly, the reálie and English rather problematically facts, even though the focus and substance of this book are ideas rather than instances. Ignore or use them as you will: this really is not a textbook! 2 Macbeth Act 5 Scene 5 12 Preface born like the crocuses peering up through the melting snow. Were we to seek the one meaning of Czech history, as our historians were wont to do a century ago, it would slip through our fingers like the days of our years. We need to tell the story of our pilgrimage through history ever again, renewing it with each telling. Thus Jan Patočka, together with Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk one of our two great thinkers in modern times, wrote two books about it. One, The Meaning of Today,3 reflects the turbulent hope of democracy and social justice in the late 1960’s. A few years and one Soviet occupation later, he wrote a very dif- ferent account, in German, What are the Czechs?4 He wrote, perhaps, in both cases with the same motivation – to offer a privileged view of our intimacy to those ordinarily excluded by the barrier of our challenging language. Yet the view was dramatically different in each of the two readings. In a flowing, changing world, it would be hard to live but one life.5 Pavel Tigrid, writing in exile in Paris, wrote a similar extended essay in Czech, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Her Own Desting.6 Meanwhile in Prague, writing under the pseudonym Podiven, Milan Otáhal, Petr Pithart and Petr Příhoda wrote their series of interpretative historical essays, The Czechs in Modern History.7 Perhaps it is a sign of the times that after I offered a still different though no less intimate view of our self-understanding to my students, I was urged to prepare an English mutation. The intent, though, is the same: to open ourselves to others – and in the process to come to a clearer understanding of ourselves. Anyone who compares those four very 3 Jan Patočka, O smysl dneška (The Meaning of Today), in: Jan Patočka, Češi I (Czechs I, edited by Karel Palek and Ivan Chvatík; Praha, OIKOYMENH 2006), pp. 231–338. 4 Jan Patočka, Co jsou Češi? (Was sind die Tschechen?) (Czech translation by V. Joch- man and J. Sokol), in: Jan Patočka, Češi II (Czechs II, edited by Karel Palek and Ivan Chvatík; Praha, OIKOYMENH 2006), pp. 253–324. 5 One of the most perceptive contemporary commentators, Karel Skalický, speaks of the meanings of Czech history in the plural.
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