The article lays out Jonathan Israel’s central ideas on the European Enlightenment, as they have been developed in his Radical Enlightenment (2001), Enlightenment Contested (2006) and A Revolution of the Mind (2009). I explain his ‘controversialist method’ of intellectual history and point out the advantages and faults of this approach. Israel’s model of the heterogeneous Enlightenment is shown as a response to A. MacIntyre’s postmodern criticism, and to the older models of a ‘single Enlightenment’, as presented by P. Gay, or older models of multiple enlightenments, as presented by J. G. Pocock. However, Israel’s heterogeneous Enlightenment recognizes just one progenitor of the positive ‘modern values’, which is identified with the Radical wing. The article reviews Israel’ s narrative of the development and spread of the Radical Enlightenment in Europe and the struggles with the Enlightenment mainstream and within the Enlightenment mainstream. However, I also show some faults in Israel’s argument, mainly his view of the ‘secular morality’, which should have been the outcome of the Radical Enlightenment’s campaign. In conclusion, I point at the inconsistency of Israel’s reconstruction of the Enlightenment morals and the differences between his view and J. Schneewind’s interpretation., Ivo Cerman., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
his study traces the changing portrayals of Maria Theresa in the writings of the most important Czech historians (F. M. Pelcl, W. W. Tomek, J. Kalousek, B. Rieger, J. Svátek, J. Pekař and J. Prokeš) up until the end of the First Republic. It also considers the works of popular chroniclers, the French historian E. Denis, and school textbooks. The author shows that from the end of the 18th century to the 1930s Czech historiography presented an image of Maria Theresa as an exceptionally capable ruler whose wide-ranging reforms brought considerable progress in many different spheres of life both in Bohemia and the monarchy as a whole. From the outset, however, there was also criticism of various aspects of her policies that were perceived as inimical to the Czech nation. First there was Germanization, especially in the education system; then, from the 1860s, the centralizing tendency of administrative reforms that threatened the (albeit limited) autonomy of the Czech state and opened the door to dualism. This criticism was especially abrasive in the works of J. Kalousek, B. Rieger and J. Svátek. Some even pointed to an actively hostile attitude on the part of the empress towards the Czech Lands. As the proliferation of factual evidence consolidated the positive image of the great monarch, critical assessments became more objective, though they never disappeared altogether. It is worth noting that, with few exceptions, the positive importance of absolutist enlightenment reforms for the emergence of the modern Czech nation-state was often overlooked., Eduard Maur., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
The article looks at how emotion is represented in Bohemian folk chronicles, i.e. texts of a historiographic character, written by autodidacts - mostly peasants and artisans. At the core of our analysis is the most famous work of this kind, Paměti Františka Jana Vaváka z let 1770-1816 (Memoirs of František Jan Vavák 1770-1816). Other writings from the turn of the 19th century (e.g. those of Václav Jan Mašek, Jan Petr, Ondřej Lukavský) are also considered. Our initial question is: How, and in which contexts, did Czech-speaking authors of the late 18th and early 19th century, having no opportunity to get acquainted with contemporary philosophical theories, express affects? The study shows that the emotions, especially joy and grief, are expressed in a way recommended by early modern rhetoricians (e.g. Cypriano de Soarez or Bernard Lamy): particular figures are associated with particular affects. Though the principle is the same, the figures used by autodidacts differ from those recommended by the rhetoric manuals. Being unable to read Latin, German or French rhetorics, the authors had probably grasped the principles of how to represent affect from their reading, but adapted them according to their own talent and vision. As might be expected given the rural origin and values of the authors, joy is expressed mostly in the context of weather favourable for the harvest, while grief is realised in the context of rising prices and natural disasters., Dmitrij Timofejev., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
This article is concerned with the attitude that the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy - KSČM) has had towards its own past. It examines the subject from the perspective of the internal development of the Party and its search for a political and cultural identity in the Czech political system. The interpretation of the past and the role of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa - KSČ) in Czech and Czechoslovak history were key elements in the ideological development of the Party in the fi rst ten years of Czech democracy after the changes beginning in November 1989. And they played a central role in the Communists’ efforts to respond to the newdemocracy’s systemic and rhetorical anti-Communism. In this article the author seeks to demonstrate what effect debates about the past had in causing divisions in the Party in the fi rst years after 1989. On the one hand they contributed to cleavages within the Party, but on the other hand they also created conditions for its later consolidation and new self-confi dence. The initial reformist strategy inclined roughly to the ideas of the Social Democratic Party and sought to win the maximum number of votes and ultimately a share in government. It was supported by the fi lm-maker and chairman of the Party, Jiří Svoboda (b. 1945) from 1990 to 1993, but was gradually superseded by the strategy of what one Czech expert on international relations, Vladimír Handl, has called the ''left-wing retreat'', and what one British political scientist, Seán Hanley, calls ''voter representation'', based on the strengthening of political-cultural identity and the emphasizing of communication between the rank-and-fi le and the leadership of the Party. As the author demonstrates, the idea of ''coming to terms with the past'' gradually acquired a meaning amongst the Communists that was markedly different from the meaning it had for most Czechs. The pragmatism of the subsequent leader, Miroslav Grebeníček (b. 1947), to a certain extent attenuated, but did not solve, the fundamental dilemma faced by the Party, which consisted in the confl ict between the ''logic of the electoral struggle'' and the ''logic of voter representation''. The fi rst trend after the downfall of the reformists in 1993 included, in particular, neoCommunist theorists (like the political thinker Miloslav Ransdorf, b. 1953), who sought to formulate Socialist alternatives acceptable to most left-leaning Czechs. That also led them to attempt a more critical analysis of their own past than the majority of their rank-and-fi le members would have done. The second trend, the logic of voter representation, oriented to preserving and strengthening the strong identity of Party members and supporters, was linked with the continuing conservative majority of the rank-and-fi le represented by local activists, the Party press, and some members of the Party leadership. All of them preferred the programme of political and social populism. They tended to understand history as the ''politics of history'' - in other words, as a means to support their own identity and to resist the hostile environment outside the Party. For both trends in the Party, however, the challenge presented by anti-Communism - whether systemic or spontaneous - remained, to the end of the 1990s, an important, if not the most important, unifying motive. But it considerably limited their possibilities to raise sensitive questions about their own past and to hold a potentially critical debate.