CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIII

THE CZECH AND CZECHOSLOVAK

IDEA OF STATE IDENTITY

As Central-European and Europeanism

MILOSLAV BEDNÁR

The philosophically anchored idea of Czechoslovakism as Central-Europeanism and Europeanism designed by T.G. Masaryk (1850-1937) provides an instructive concrete example of how to elaborate and apply politically the philosophical concept of democracy for the long-term. The spiritually religious point of departure of Masaryk’s conception of Czechoslovakism, which stems from the ideals of the Czech Reformation, by no means intended any limitation in terms of a Church confession. Masaryk considered the central question of the Czech Reformation to be the fundamental event of the spirit of European history and for the following reason. The moral conflict of John Hus and his movement during the first three decades of the fifteenth century presented a decisive ethical challenge aimed at the only West-European spiritual institution with universal stature and aspiration. This radical event constituted the first conclusive fundamental conflict of Europeanism between the exterior authority of institutions and the intrinsic authority of the freedom of the moral and religious conscience.1

The entrance of the Czech Reformation upon the stage of European history came about as a result of the long development of the Czech idea of the state. This originated in the second half of the 9th century as a translation of the preceding Cyrillo-Methodian spiritual and political efforts. These were aimed consistently at both papal recognition and authority over the otherwise autonomous Greater Moravian Church administration. This had a unique liturgy in understandable Slavonic language which did not belong to the codified three liturgical languages.2 It constituted a specifically Christian founding and justification of national individuality.

This consisted in the insight that all peoples have equal access to the highest spiritual good. The recognition and development of this notion gave birth to the Czech political philosophy in its two characteristically interconnected tendencies. First, an increasing emphasis on the primary authority of the Christian moral conscience of individuals. Second, the principle of equal access to the highest Christian spiritual good was increasingly viewed as the true purpose of Europe as a pluralistic whole. This dual essence of Czech spirituality and political philosophy was oriented towards Platonism, especially after founding of the University of Prague in 1348. There the spiritual ground for the Hussite Christian Reformation was prepared within the framework of medieval realism.3

J.A. COMENIUS

The spiritual core of the idea of the Czech state can be summarized as a Christian Platonism with a characteristic democratic emphasis upon the equality and irreplaceability of ethically based individuals. This was the foundation of the Czech and later the Czechoslovak idea of the state. The major turning points of this development include the medieval theological realism of Prague University which characteristically absorbed the reform challenge of Wyclif, and the succeeding Hussite movement as the first European Reformation. This resulted in the radical humanism of J.A. Comenius’ (1592-1670) spiritually conceived reform of human affairs which made the spiritual background of the Czech philosophy of state identity lucidly clear in the midst of the European turn to modernity. It constituted the spiritual climax of the Czech Reformation in the form of a democratized Christian Platonism synthesizing the two determinative sources from which Western civilization had arisen.4

Comenius (Komenský in Czech) concentrated his spiritual and moral efforts on "emending human affairs" through a democratic Christian reworking of Plato’s ethical and political philosophical project. He stressed that his goal was "to enlighten all men through true wisdom, to bring them back into order by means of a just State (Vera politia), to unite them with God through true religion so that no one can fail to realize the meaning of his purpose in the world."5 The line of philosophical Enlightenment which led to Leibniz and Herder originated in this Christian democratized Platonism of Komenský. It was a philosophical view rooted in a spiritually grounded ethics which emphasized the irreplaceability of individuals sub specie aetemitatis.

For Komenský, the ideal of education was coterminous with a worldwide reform of individual lives and, consequently, of politics. This reform movement would entirely redirect these from their present semi-educated state of value relativism and narrow egotism toward their overall spiritual purpose, thereby redirecting the whole of human history. This pivotal thrust of Komenský’s efforts remained misunderstood in his time, which was marked above all by the sweeping advent of modem natural science that was to prevail for centuries on the world scene.

This predicament followed upon the fateful decision of the British Royal Learned Society, the first scientific community in the modem sense of the term, to exclude political, religious and public subjects from their activities. Though this precaution may have been understandable within the context of the devastating religious wars of the time, nevertheless it effectively separated the ideal of science from any and all inquiry into the spiritual moorings of individual and political life. This has had huge repercussions up to the present time. Since Komenský’s work and efforts obviously were the systematic opposite of a type of science which refused to consider the meaning of life and the world, they were isolated from the mainstream developments of his time.6

Nevertheless, visibly reinforced by the Slovak environment of the original Czech influx of Reformation, this evolving current of ideas provided the leading spiritual basis of the Czechoslovak renewal of national identity at the end of the 18th century.7

T. MASARYK

Accordingly, Masaryk’s concept, Czechoslovakism was anchored primarily in a philosophical and religious Platonism as a consistent view of life, imbued with the above mentioned Czech spiritual tradition. Masaryk called this fundamental standpoint religious democracy.8 Czechoslovakism consisted in an ontologico-ethical revival and community of two compatible national branches which shared above all this origin which integrated their differences. On this basis and common ground, the distinct Slovak and Czech elements were mutual enrichments and reinforcements of the organic Czechoslovak unity.9

The rise of the Czechoslovak Republic as a philosophically based democracy is inseparable from Masaryk’s global scheme of Mid-european and Pan-european reconstruction. The new Czechoslovakia from 1918 should become the very focus of a consistent democratic alternative to the impasse of European peace designed as a balance of the great powers. As Masaryk stressed repeatedly, this had plunged Europe and the whole world into war.10 The reconstruction of Europe on this democratic basis would solve the precarious German question in a positive way by compelling Germany to follow the humanist program of the best German thinkers.11

In close cooperation with western democracies, Masaryk’s Czechoslovak Republic should become a paradigm for a unity of nations founded on philosophical respect for particular national individualities. Along these lines, the ethico-political concept of the Czechoslovak nation should work as an illustrative example and incentive of how to proceed in these extremely difficult problems. Primarily, the Czecho-Slovak unit was conceived as the central and promising example of the way towards a just future unity of equal rights for all six Czechoslovak nations in one common Republic. The theoretical core of this modem principle of multinational democratic state was an interpretation of Herder’s philosophical humanism in spirit of the Christian-Platonic democratic traditions of the Czech Idea of the state. This provided a consistent philosophical and moral recognition of individuals as the consistent opposite of nationalism in its present pejorative sense.12

Thus, Masaryk’s conception of Czechoslovakism was built on the philosophical democratic grounds of Europeanism. Masaryk was aware of the difficulties of the transition of all Czechoslovak nations, i.e. Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Ruthenians, to such a demanding sort of multinational state. For this reason he stressed the need for fifty years of undisturbed democratic development for Czechoslovakia as a precondition for attaining that objective.13

On the one hand, Masaryk’s Mid-european vision of the Czechoslovak reconstruction of the centre of Europe after the First World War proclaimed the concept of the natural union of national identity and internationalism. This was developed by F. Palacký (1798-1876) in the course of his polemic against the superficial, coercively centralizing liberalism and cosmopolitism of French and German origin. For Palacký, the global unifying movement, which is positive in many respects, solicits the opposing movement of diversity as well, expressed in the tendency to national unification. Communication among particular nations works to intensify the awareness of their differences and resistance to their unification in uniformity is thus induced.14

On the other hand and in tune with that, Masaryk pivotally applied his concept of religious democracy as a philosophical conception of diversity in unity to the problem of European identity and integrity. For Masaryk,

there is no difference between national identity and internationalism, if we understand the point appropriately. If internationalism is taken in the old way as a sort of cosmopolitism and liberalism, it generates opposition between internationalism and national identity: but we all understand internationalism as an organization of nations which are capable of managing their own affairs, and this is why we make no difference. Internationalism, Europe and humanity is not something above nations. There is no — and cannot be — any difference between internationalism and national identity. Humanity tends in two directions, national and international. At the moment of liberation of nations, humanity approaches its unity as well. We strive not for a struggle of one against other, but for reconciliation and a unity of all nations. However, we intend to achieve the unity of humankind by a natural, peaceful organizing of nations, not . . . by the domination of one nation over the others. National principles are expressed in the equality of the rights of nations. This implies that national individuality of small nations must be recognized besides the individuality of big nations. The cultural individuality of conscious nations is of equal right.15

In the course of his stay in America in 1918 Masaryk gained decisive recognition for the so-called Mid-european Union, which united exiled politicians of politically non-independent nations. The major objective was a post-war reorganization of minor nations between Germany and Russia from Finland to Greece. They should liberate themselves, organize voluntarily, and so initiate a democratically based reorganization of Europe and humanity as "a new form of life."16 In the spirit of this scheme of a Mid-european Union Masaryk, in agreement with the Greek prime minister Venizelos and the Romanian minister of foreign affairs Ionescu, attempted to organize a United States of Eastern Europe as a federation of thirteen states that should become the core of the future United States of Europe. This initial federation should guarantee the independence of member states and begin, in close cooperation with the large democratic powers, an era of economic renewal.

In the end, the original design of this project failed due to a lack of cooperation. This consisted of chauvinist political passions of some new states in central and eastern Europe, the prevalence of selfish political interests in post-war Britain and France, and last but not least the American isolationist withdrawal from Europe as an ominous result of the defeat of President Wilson who was the key counterpart of Masaryk’s project of a new democratic unity of Europe. The residue of this project was the establishment of Small Entente which characteristically tended to widen toward North and South with a long-term view of creating a United States of Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, Masaryk decisively enlarged the Pan-European movement. This inspired the Wilsonian "League of Nations" to serious attempts to bring a United States of Europe into practice through a reconciliation of Germany and France in the late twenties. Masaryk supported this scheme that, for well known reasons, could be worked out only in a non-communist, mostly western Europe after the World War II.17

The core of this outline of a model project for the national and international democratic identity of Europe consists in the explicit and consistently applied philosophical and moral foundations of democratic Czechoslovakism. Mid-europeanism and Europeanism present a fundamental comparative criterion for judging the contemporary situation of Europe, including the problem of identity models in post-communist societies. To prevent the continuation of communist type abuse of national tensions in these societies and states, and to overcome the perduring insufficiency of democratic culture in the aftermath of decades of communism, some basic rules follow from the above considerations.

Generally, the problem of post-communist identities presents a substantive question resulting from extreme turns and convulsions of European history in the nineteenth century, which finally culminated in drastic outward forms of two hot and one cold world war in the twentieth century. The essential point, however, seems to lay in a continuous decomposition and suppression of the basic elements of civil democratic dignity. These naturally result from the human resolution to act and behave fairly, which means to adopt a reliable conviction of the transcendent foundations of human life, and its implications for the civic virtues of courage and prudence. Along the lines of these lasting habits, the justice of human conduct can provide the indispensable background of democracy and its manifold national models of identity.

Our more or less shared post-communist experience means that just this crucial phenomenon of human dignity as civility was more or less efficiently prevented or, as in the case of Czechoslovakia, first destroyed and then prevented. The prevention of democratic civility as human identity in terms of dignity is, nonetheless, European in origin. It embodies a typically European mode of spiritual and ethical deficiency which is the perduring lure of systematic half-heartedness as a mental relief from, and superficial emulation of, genuine democratic dignity. If this reversal of values prevails, the spiritual and moral basis of democratic civilization as the principal European identity of citizens, societies, nations and states is over.

Precisely this state of affairs prompts us to ask the question about models of identity in postcommunist societies. A promising answer to this question might be to weaken and replace the deeply rooted human options for vagueness and half-heartedness through and by particular examples of human fairness, belief, prudence and courage as shown by individuals, groups, bodies of civil society, political parties, etc. This would provide a solid ground of genuine European internationalism as the indispensable backbone of European democratic unity in the framework of global democratic civilization.

The next step might be a topical, committed resumption of the major political tenets of a just and democratic European unity. Such rules, which have to be sought and achieved throughout, consistently reflect thousands years of development with obvious differences among European nations and states:

First, is the tenet of the equality of the freedom and independence of individual states, irrespective of their size.

Second, any realistic, gradually attainable unity of Europe in the framework of democratic civilization requires a natural and gradual union of the trends of both centralization and autonomy as cardinal tendencies of world history. Consequently, authentic European unity on a democratic basis might appear as a looser federation through a non-violent spontaneous union of the smaller federalized wholes of European states.18

To conclude, the problem of models of identity in postcommunist societies seems inseparable from a vigorous recuperation and reinterpretation of the unitive democratic spirit of Europe in terms of an harmonious and hence stable unity of the national, state and regional European plurality.

NOTES

1. Cf. T.G. Masaryk, Jan Hus (Praha: Bursik & Kohout, 1923), pp. 17-19, 130-131. Cf. T.G. Masaryk, „eská otázka (Czech Question) (Praha: „in, 1948), p. 211.

2. Cf. F. Dvorník, Byzantské misie u Slovanç, Vyšehrad (Praha, 1970), pp. 205-36; D. TÍeštík, "Biskup Vojtch a vznik stÍední Evropy", Djiny a sou…asnost No. 3, vol. 97, pp. 5-12.

3. Cf. Vilém Herold, Prañská univerzita a Wyclif (The University of Prague and Wyclif) (Praha: Univerzita Karlova, 1985).

4. Cf. Jan Pato…ka, Aristoteles, jeho pËedchçdci a ddicové (Aristotle, His Forerunners, and His Heirs) (Praha: CSAV, 1964), pp. 329-388.

5. Jan Amos Komenský, Pampaedia I, 29 (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1960).

6. Cf. J.D. Bernal, "Comenius and the Organization of Modem Science," in AJAK 18, Supplement (1959), pp. 77-89.

7. Cf. V. Herold, Prañská universita a Wyclif (Praha: Univerzita Karlova, 1985); J.A. Komenský, Pampaedia II, IV (Heidelbeg: Quelle & Meyer, 1960); B. Slavík, Od Dobnera k Dobrovskému (Praha: Vyšehrad, 1975); J.M. Lochman, Duchovní odkaz obrození (Praha: Kalich, 1964).

8. Cf. E. Ludwig, Duch a „in (Praha: Druistevnf prdce, 1937), p. 71.

9. Cf. Slovenské hlasy, I/10, August 28, 1917.

10. Cf. "Letters of T.G. Masaryk", in The Saturday Review, January 23, 1917; New Statesman, February 3, 1917; Nation, February 3, 1917.

11. Cf. T.G. Masaryk, At the Eleventh Hour: A Confidential Memorandum (London, 1916).

12. Cf. Masaryk a Beneš ve svých dopisech z doby paÍíñskych mírových jednámí v roce 1919 (Masaryk and Beneš in Their Letters of the Time of Paris Peace Talks in 1919), Vol. II, ed. Z. Šolle (Praha: Studia historiae Academicae scientiarurn bohemicae, Seria 6 B 1994, 1994), p. 157.

13. Cf. K. „apek, Hovory s T.G. Masarykem (Conversations with T.G. Masaryk) (Praha: Czeskoslovenský spisovatel, 1990), p. 339.

14. František Palacký, Úvahy a projevy (Reflections and Speeches) (Praha: Melantrich, 1977), pp. 92, 343-344.

15. "Masaryk o pomru národnoti a mezinárodnosti" (Masaryk on Relationship of National Identity and Internationalism), „eskoslovenská samostatnost (Czechoslovak Independence), vol. IV, no. 28, December 11, 1918; Cf. F. Palacký, ibid., pp. 343, 354, 357.

16. Cf. "Letter of T.G. Masaryk to W. Wilson of November 11, 1918," Archives of TGM, XV - 25.

17. Cf. R.N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, The Crusade for Pan-Europe (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1943), pp. 75-76; Coudenhove-Kalergi, Ein Leben für Europa (Cologn-Berlin: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1966), pp. 119, 129-30; Coudenhove-Kalergi, Panevropa (Praha, 1926), p. 73; E. Ludwig, ibid., pp. 205-206.

18. Cf. T.G. Masaryk, "O pomru národnosti a mezinárodnosti", in Nová Evropa (The New Europe) (Praha: G. Dubsky, 1920), p. 88; T.G. Masaryk, Svtová revoluce (The Making of the State), (Praha: „in 1930), p. 503; T.G. Masaryk, Edvard Beneš, OtevÍít Rusko Evrop (Open Russia to Europe) (Praha: H and H, 1992), p. 19.