Czech philosophy, has often eschewed "pure" speculative philosophy, emerging rather in the course of intellectual debates in the fields of education (e.g.
Jan Amos Komenský), art (e.g.
Karel Teige
Karel Teige (13 December 1900 – 1 October 1951) was a Czech modernist avant-garde artist, writer, critic and one of the most important figures of the 1920s and 1930s movement. He was a member of the '' Devětsil'' (Butterbur) movement in the ...
), literature (e.g.
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera ( ; ; 1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship ...
), and especially politics (e.g.
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Tomáš () is a Czech name, Czech and Slovak name, Slovak given name, equivalent to the name Thomas (name), Thomas. Tomáš is also a surname (feminine: Tomášová). Notable people with the name include:
Given name Sport
*Tomáš Berdych (born 198 ...
,
Ivan Sviták,
Václav Havel
Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last List of presidents of Czechoslovakia, president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissol ...
). A source drawing from literature, however, distinguished the Czech national philosophy from the speculative tradition of German thought, citing that it emerged from folk wisdom and peasant reasoning.
Masaryk is credited for introducing the
epistemological
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...
problem into the modern Czech philosophy, which in turn influenced the discourse on symbol and symbolization. Czech philosophers have also played a central role in the development of
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 ...
, whose German-speaking founder
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology.
In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...
was born in the
Czech lands
The Czech lands or the Bohemian lands (, ) is a historical-geographical term which denotes the three historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia out of which Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic and Slovakia, were formed. ...
. Czechs
Jan Patočka and
Václav Bělohradský would later make important contributions to phenomenological thought. Philosophy in
Communist Czechoslovakia
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, (Czech and Slovak: ''Československá socialistická republika'', ČSSR) known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic (''Československá republika)'', Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, or simply Czech ...
officially had to conform to
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
-style
Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of scien ...
, but this also produced some interesting moments such as the thought of
Karel Kosík or the international Marxist-Christian dialogue led by
Milan Machovec in the 1960s leading up to the
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring (; ) was a period of liberalization, political liberalization and mass protest in
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected Secretary (title), First Secre ...
.
Positivism became an important and dominant trend of modern Czech philosophy, eclipsing
herbatianism, in what is explained as a collective "post-revolutionary" thinking characterized by an attempt to open a window to Europe in order to eliminate traces of philosophical provincialism.
References
{{Authority control
Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
Czech literature