| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: a1_The common opinion that the anti-totalitarian revolution in central and Eastern Europe in 1989 was simply a return of this part of Europe to the tried and tested liberal democratic system is very superficial. Like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, who were distinguished not only by their outstanding intellectual but also by their personal experience of totalitarian regimes, the Czechoslovak political philosophers (T. G. Masaryk and Jan Patocka) also achieved a much more profound analysis and conclusions through investigating the tensions between the sources of democracy and totalitarianism. For Masaryk the central point was the increase in knowledge about the indispensable spiritual and moral foundations of democratic institutions. The democratic constitutional system is truly legitimate since it provides a sphere which allows and supports unreplaceable individual morals, coherently reforming concepts of the meaning of life and the world; in Masaryk’s terminology religious democracy. In Masaryk the influence of both the Czech tradition of political philosophy (Havlíček, Palacký, Comenius) and of Tocqueville and Mill’s conception of democracy as a way of living is obvious. The fundamental philosophical sphere of Masaryk’s understanding of politics was their spiritual and moral anchoring in Plato’s thought. Plato’s philosophy was also the starting point for the political philosophy of Jan Patočka who drew on Plato’s concept of ideas which called for a transcendence of more existing things and objects. Experience of freedom and internal life are consequently indispensable for understanding human life. Patoka therefore sees the intellectual foundation of the origin of Europe in Plato’s theme of concern for the soul. |
