The article deals with the relationship between T. G. Masaryk and the Catholic Church after the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918. The paper reflects actual synthesis of the relationship of T. G. Masaryk and Catholic Church, their mutual association and struggle at the turn of the 10´s and 20´s of the 20th century. The analysis presents important editions of documents, Czech archives regarding the religious person of T. G. Masaryk and new open archive collections of the Vatican Secret Archives. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
The study maps the journey of Milan Machovec from Christianity to Marxism and on to the Marxist-Christian dialogue which Milan Machovec personified in the 1960’s. In addition to the usual sources the study draws on unfamiliar juvenile texts, minor contributions in press and on his two dissertations at Charles University. – These sources show that his conception of socialism prior to the Communist coup and his first response to it did not conform to the ideology of the new regime. Machovec rejected the role of “martyr for freedom” because he understood his life as a task. He joined the Communist party and adopted the idiom of the time, but continued to strive for joining socialist ideals with the democratic heritage of Masaryk’s republic as even Zdeněk Nejedlý promised. – These early texts also show that Machovec was concerned with the issues he later elaborated already as graduate student. They included freedom, humanity, morality, the meaning of the human lot, the relation of the individual and the whole, sacrifice, the role of religion in society, the role of personality in history and society, ways of working with historic material in relation to pressing problems. – While Machovec may have lost the religious faith of his youth he remained ever loyal to Masaryk’s ideals of humanity, especially the idea that the task of humans is growth to more mature humanity. Masaryk’s bequest never ceased to be a tangent of Machovec’s thought, helping to lay the ground rules by which he moderated the dialogue of Christians and Marxists. The task of the dialogue was not to be persuasion but rather grasping of a common task: Marxists and Christians could meet, each in his way, on the ground of this Masaryk-given task.
The article deals with the celebrations for the Czechoslovak First
Republic on the state holiday (October 28) and the visits of Presidents Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš to the Moravian border town Znojmo/Znaim. This town on the
Czech-German “language border” only became part of Czechoslovakia in late December 1918. During the interwar period, both the state holiday as well as the visits of the presidents were used to create loyalty to the state and its local representatives. These events reflect the understanding of the state in local politics. During the twenties, the celebrations on October 28 were solely dominated by Czech parties and resulted in conflicts with their
German counterparts. The understanding of the state holiday changed during the thirties. Against the backdrop of political turmoil in Czechoslovakia and Europe, the festivities on October 28 provided an opportunity to construct unity in a multinational state. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
Czechoslovak republic was founded and grew as a parliamentary demo¬cracy whose theoretical ideological conception was Masaryk’s idea of democracy. Masaryk was convinced that democracy, expressing the meaning of modern Western humanity, could not find itself in a crisis as such. Only democrats could fail. However, the factual development of the Czechoslovak state in the 1920’s and 1930’s manifested signs of a crisis. The question thus became one of sustainability of Masaryk’s ideas. One of the serious attempts at their critical reflection is the structurally functionalist conception of crisis of democracy offered by Josef Ludvík Fischer, a sociologist and a philosopher, who saw the root of the problem in a structural pathology, not an individual failure. The crisis can be resolved, according to Fischer, by constituting a “composable society” which respects the order of reality. Masaryk and Fisher agree that democracy needs be built on a global understanding of what there is as a whole.
Edice korespondence karlínského lékaře Josefa Adolfa Bulovy (1839-1903) a T. G. Masaryka obsahuje 21 dopisů z let 1899 až 1903, přičemž jeden z těchto dopisů je psán manželkou J. A. Bulovy Josefínou. Korespondence zachycuje zejména problematiku Hilsnerovy aféry, v níž šlo o proces s polenským Židem Leopoldem Hilsnerem, který byl obviněn z rituální vraždy Anežky Hrůzové a bez přímých důkazů odsouzen k trestu smrti. Bulova s Masarykem se shodli na názoru, že se nejednalo o rituální vraždu a že došlo k chybám ze strany vyšetřovatelů, a snažili se o obnovení procesu. Bulova se o vraždu zajímal z lékařského hlediska a své postřehy psal Masarykovi. Navzájem se také informovali o svých studiích. Diskutována byla zejména brožura T. G. Masaryka Nutnost revidovati process Polenský, v níž se Masaryk s Bulovou radil o lékařských detailech, a spisek J. A. Bulovy Zum Polnaer Ritualmordprozess. Kromě polenského procesu byly tématem dopisů také náboženské a filozofické otázky. Edice těchto dokumentů představuje příspěvek k hlubšímu poznání Masarykových postojů týkajících se hilsneriády. V širších souvislostech korespondence odhaluje společenskou situaci té doby, protknutou silnými antisemitskými náladami., This edition of the correspondence between the Karlín physician Josef Adolf Bulova (1839-1903) and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk contains 21 letters dating from 1899 to 1903, and one of the letters was written by the wife of Josef Adolf Bulova, Josefína. The correspondence deals largely with the Hilsner Affair, which was a trial with a Jew, Leopold Hilsner, who was charged with ritual murder of Anežka Hrůzové and sentenced to death without direct evidence. Bulova concurred with Masaryk that it was not a ritual murder and the investigators had erred, and endeavoured to have the trial resumed. Bulova was interested in the murder from the medical perspective and wrote his observations to Masaryk. They informed each other about their studies. In particular, they discussed a brochure by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Nutnost revidovati process Polenský, in which Masaryk took Bulova’s advice on the medical details and a treatise by Josef Adolf Bulova, Zum Polnaer Ritualmordprozess. Apart from the Polná trial the correspondence concerned religious and philosophical questions. The edition of these documents is a contribution to a deeper understanding of Masaryk’s attitudes to the Hilsner Affair. In broader contexts the correspondence exposes the social situation of that time reflecting strong anti-Semitic moods. Translated by Paul Sinclair, and Překlad resumé: Paul Sinclair
The author points to a duality in Masaryk’s immensely influental thought between his scientisti positivism and the spiritualism of his human longing for God. The partisans of Masaryk’s scientific emphasis (F. Krejčí, F. Drtina and especially Josef Tvrdý developing conceptions of induction, emergent evolution and humanism) needed to overcome the limitations of Masaryk’s positivism. That was also the task for Masaryk’s philosophical opponents who drew on Driesch’s neovitalism and Bergson’s intuitivism (Kantian F. Mareš, transcendental idealist V. Hoppe, personalist F. Pelikán) the author offers an overview of such authors, emphasising especially the neognosticism of Karel Vorovka as an important contribution to the overcoming of positivism. T e author considers the negative attitude against all things catholic then prevailing in Czech society as the common obstacle to a fruitful dialogue between the opponents of positivism with Masaryk’s religiously open-minded supporters as E. Rádl and J. L. Hromádka. Only much later is an increasingly ecumental openness helping overcome that obstacle.