As mentioned in the previous chapter, in the first two to three decades of this century, positivism was considered the "leading" philosophy in the Czech area. This is supported in reverse by existing documents concerning the fight for freedom of Czech philosophy whose aim was precisely to combat positivism and its followers. As we shall see later, this effort was carried forward by philosophers associated in the early 20s with Ruch filosofický (Philosophical Action) review. However, even in its highest point, positivism was not the only philosophy in the Czech lands. This chapter will deal with its several opponents from the group of "idealist" philosophy, i.e., philosophers who tried to overcome the positivistic designation of any transcendence as "unknowable" by cognitive means which went beyond the limitations of the positivist notion of "rationality". Older representatives of this stream were Frantiek Mare and Ladislav Klíma, later there were Vladimír Hoppe, Karel Vorovka, and others. The term "idealism" comes from the positivist, Krejí, who used this term to define all non-positivists: according to their relationship to metaphysics he divided all philosophers into positivists and idealists.

BEFORE WORLD WAR I

Frantiek Mare (1857-1942) was the first Czech critic of positivism, coming upon the Czech philosophical scene when Krejí's positivism had only started to predominate over the then prevailing herbatism. (Mare was a year older than Krejí.) His early works show him to be a definite religious opponent who saw reason as exceeding the limits of "scientific" philosophy. Later he was often cited by the younger, "idealist" generation. He argued that science and the so-called "scientific philosophy" were not sufficient for solving all the problems of modern society and individuals and for coping with the developing crises.⁽²⁴⁾

Having completed his studies at the Roman Catholic High School in eské Budjovice in 1876, Frantiek Mare began to study philosophy at Prague University. Disappointed by the lectures, he changed to medicine and became a junior, later a senior lecturer and professor of physiology (1890) dealing with the metabolism, anergic changes in organisms, the newel and circulatory systems. He described his understanding of physiology as "a theory of life" in Veobecná fysiologie (General Physiology, 1894) and Fysiologie (Physiology, in six volumes, 1906-1929).

Physiological investigations stimulated Mare's interest in philosophy.⁽²⁵⁾ They strengthened his conviction that life functions could not be explained on the basis of physics and chemistry only and that further investigations regarding life needed to be analyzed to identify their epistemological character. In 1894 he referred to Liebig and voiced a hypothesis or metaphysical postulate in the journal Atheneum on the existence of an independent force, by which he meant an original spiritual initiator of life processes.⁽²⁶⁾ He advocated this essentially vitalistic viewpoint in a number of philosophical treatises, several of which were then published in books entitled Pravda nad skutenost (Truth Above Reality, 1918) and Idealism a realism v pirodní vd (Idealism and Realism in Science, 1901).⁽²⁷⁾

Mare's philosophy stemmed from Kant's "basis of cognition". In the study O jednot ivota (On the Life of Unity, 1894), the "requirement of restricting human cognition to what was potentially at least able to be experienced by the senses" was for him the basis for rejecting the "naive realism" he had formed in science and philosophy including the materialistic philosophy that "recognized matter-energy as the ultimate cause and reason for everything and thought that it could have given origin to life by a random configuration of natural forces." Mare' postulate of a spiritual life-principle manifested his dissatisfaction with the relativist science restricted to the sphere of phenomena. He looked for ways to deeper metaphysical truths in feeling, intuition, and an inner, direct (i.e., not mediated by the senses and brain) perception of the "true reality"; he often said that "truth lies in the feeling".⁽²⁸⁾ The references to "the direct experience of reality" were the background for his hypothesis of a vis vitalis, a "metaphysical basis of life", an "entelecheia, the special autonomous, dynamic and teleological spiritual factor", which differentiated between non-living and living nature as well as between the body and soul.

In this respect Mare, beginning from his essay, "Mechanismus a mysticismus" ("Mechanism and Mysticism", 1897), often cited Driesch and Bergson.⁽²⁹⁾ He also had a great respect for Schopenhauer, like many other Czech followers of Kant. In the work of this "restorer of Kant's teaching" and in his concept of will as the principle of the living nature, Mare found "the roots of vitalism, from which stemmed the vitalism of Bergson and Driesch". His religious feeling, however, did not allow Mare to become Schopenhauer's unconditional follower, for Schopenhauer's metaphysics of a blind will was too naturalistic, his epistemology too subjectivistic, and his ethics too pessimistic. When Mare writes about "the creative global will" he means the Christian God, who challenges man through Jesus as mediator to participate in the formation of God's Kingdom in mankind."

Frantiek Mare was essentially a polemicist in Czech philosophy. He continually criticized positivism, especially its application in psychology,⁽³⁰⁾ monism and materialism; he even attempted (evidently in vain) to advocate the authenticity of Rukopisy (The Manuscripts) and others. Mare also initiated the Czech "dispute about Kant".⁽³¹⁾ In his opinion, Kant was a true Christian--even Catholic--philosopher; the Catholic church would be wrong to reject Kant's philosophy. He discussed this topic in his last work, Soumrak duchovní kultury ped svítáním (The Dusk of Spiritual Culture Before the Dawn, 1939). In it he argued that Thomists relied too much on science and thus got into constant disputes with naturalist philosophers about what could be deduced from scientific findings about "the ultimate reason and cause of things". Kant may be the best weapon against materialism and atheism: as its primary condition the conception of reason leads to postulating the transcendental subject as the creator of rational categories ("in his reason man is the image of God"). Kant also promoted religion by "embedding faith in God's existence in the firm soil of the moral law which is grafted in the human soul a priori".

Leaving aside the historians of philosophy, the philosophical attitudes and views of Frantiek Mare may be of interest to readers concerned with relationships between science, philosophy and religion and who also seek to reinforce the justification of their religious beliefs by scientific and philosophical arguments. The paragraphs below will attempt to discuss the legacy of philosopher and writer, Ladislav Klíma, another critic of positivism. Today we witness a third wave of interest in Klíma, the first wave being after the Second World War and the second in the late 60s.

Ladislav Klíma's (1878-1928) life and work defy the traditional image of the Czech philosopher of the end of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. Klíma stood in sharp contradiction to positivism and all academic philosophy; by his way of life he rejected the norms of contemporary Czech society. Born to the family of a well-off lawyer, he soon wandered from the path one would expect. This began by his expulsion from high school after he had offended (at least in the judgment of the faculty) a member of the Habsburg royal family.⁽³²⁾ Klíma then relinquished not only all further education, but also the "normal" way of life. He never attempted to have a permanent job, after spending all the money inherited from his parents and sister he lived on occasional royalties and contributions from his friends. His premature death was caused partly by his attraction to alcohol and partly by a life in accord with his own extreme subjectivistic philosophy. His purely philosophical (in form, as well) first work, was Svt jako vdomí a nic (World as Consciousness and Nothing, 1904). From the philosophical point of view, Klíma said almost everything here; his later, more-or-less fictional, works focus on elements of his perception of the world and life.

The destructive tendencies that pervade the whole of Klíma's work reject absolutely all previous philosophies, culture, moral values and the world itself. This, however, does not mean that Klíma cannot be situated. His philosophy, which he called existentialism or omnism, may be ranked in the larger concept of the philosophy of man which was then current in Europe. Klíma was an enthusiastic follower of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Like Nietzsche, he not only advocated the idea of a man of a higher type, but also strictly rejected Christian morality.⁽³³⁾

In his philosophy, Klíma postulates an absolute subject at the pinnacle of all reality. Having rejected everything external, this subject clearly understood his substance and became the bearer or creator of his own divinity (a notion he referred to as deoessence"). "Why did the gods become gods? Because they wanted to become gods!" The center of Klíma's philosophy is this subject, born by will and equal to God, the only existing one. It manifests his subjectivism, irrationalism, sophism and existential thinking oriented to the capabilities of the human spirit. Here Klíma not only "meets" his models in philosophy, but he goes beyond them.

He perceives reality as absurd, a prismatic world of will and image. Klíma considers the subject to be the condition of all existence, the bearer of the world. Where the highest, purely cognitive being for Schopenhauer is the man who denied his will, Klíma asks only one thing: the realization of his own will. This brings Klíma close to Nietzsche with his will to power liberating itself from the bounds of the bourgeois world and affirming itself. By the possibilities attributed to the subject as the bearer of existence, Klíma exceeds Nietzsche's theory of eternal return; in his book Svt jako vdomí a nic (The World as Consciousness and Nothing) he absolutely empties "the world" of its substance and claims the world to be a fiction.

The spiritual situation in Europe at the turn of the century and early twentieth century, when Klíma's philosophical outlook matured, favored Nietzsche's ideal of a new strong man. This phenomenon can be observed also in the Czech lands where Nietzsche's influence can be observed in the Czech literary men of the Decadence who were contributors to Moderni review; Otokar Bezina, a symbolist poet; Jakub Deml, a Catholic poet; J.S. Machar, a political lyricist; F.X. alda, an aesthetician and literary critic; and Frantiek Krejí, the most important representative of Czech positivism. Most clearly, however, this can be observed in Ladislav Klíma's existentialism.

Klíma's individuality lies not only in his conception of philosophy, but also in his attempt to conform to it in his personal life. His autobiographical and philosophical confession⁽³⁴⁾ illustrates his rises and falls, his attempts to grasp his own power and to shout his Deus sum (I am God). He tested his own deity in a life without any money, and in nonconformism that rejected all conventions, including a job. All this was to lead Klíma to control of self. Both this way of life and his thinking provoked the "official" Czech philosophers, many of whom openly rejected Klíma's works. However, Klíma also had friends and patrons who supported him in difficulties. Though none of them fully shared his views, they admired Klíma's dream of a new man who would not be bound by bourgeois moral conventions. Besides the above-mentioned admirers of Nietzsche's work, O. Bezina and F.X. alda, there was especially philosopher Karel Vorovka, sociologist Emanuel Chalupný (who for a long time was the only reviewer of Klíma's first philosophical work), theater critic Josef Kodíek and Marxist publicist Jaroslav Kabe, who promoted the publication of Klíma's works.

Klíma's philosophical heritage is found not only in his Svt jako vdomí a nic (The World as Consciousness and Nothing, second edition, 1928), but also in his books Traktáty a diktáty (Tracts and Dictations, 1922) and Vteina a vnost (A Second and Eternity, 1927) which contain most of his contributions to magazines from the post-World War I period. His prose work, "Utrpení kníete Sternenhocha" ("Duke Sternenhoch's Suffering", 1928), has also a philosophical "flavor" and met with great disapproval from its readers. Through his fiction Klima explains the basis of deoessence and disregards all contemporary taboos in literature. The reviews began to write about Klíma's expressionism, symbolism, surrealism, his great creativity and imagination, and also about his perversion and morbidity. Duke Sternenhoch moves from the normal life of a nobleman to a life filled with suffering, eccentricity, fits of madness and self-torment. This culminates in a morbid end when he fully realizes his own being and overcomes his "normal" past. Among other works, Slavná Nemesis a jiné píbhy (Famous Nemesis and Other Stories, 1932) and two volumes of his correspondence⁽³⁵⁾ are philosophically interesting.

If the absolute subject is at the summit of Klíma's philosophy, its beginning is marked by the complete negation of the bourgeois morality and culture. In Klíma's view the modern European chose the worst form of slavery by giving priority to a full stomach, fear and discipline rather than dangerous freedom and human pride. "Society is identical with total depravity." The fact that today's philosophy is unable to aver anything testifies to its inability to recognize unquestionable truth; "everything is true and false at the same time." The only thing one can base his view on is his own presumption that something exists; thus the outer world and nature are only reflections of a state of mind. In Klíma's conception the erroneous knowledge based on fictitious time, space and impermeability, etc., is to be overcome by new learning.

Emotion, ideas, and inspiration are dominated by the ecstatic dimension, which--sub specie aeternitatis--is the only connection between man and eternity, the only way to oneself. Uncertainty can be overcome by the certainty of deoessence. The mystical view may reveal man's complexity and finally his deity. The world, identified with knowledge, exists in the atoms of thought, each of which combines with others over time. The most intimate secret of the world is that the world has no value: at the end of a giddy cycle, after reviewing all the antitheses, everything ends in nothing. The one who is not an egodeist, who does not exclusively examine his inner feelings, does not understand his very substance, which will be affirmed only during the cycle of time; he does not understand the only truth, namely, that the world is consciousness and nothing. However, Klíma resisted absolute nihilism. His world is without any value, but his man lives; absolute negation lies within life; the human deity is prior to a world without any value.⁽³⁶⁾

Ladislav Klíma's attention was focused on the heights of human spirit, on man's aiming at achieving inner freedom and his ability to make this change. He was a keen follower of all acts that liberated the spirit from false morality and calculation both in private life and in the life of the nation.⁽³⁷⁾ He did not challenge anyone to follow deoessence. Having put the era of ego-deism in the future millennia, he was able to view things from a distance. Ladislav Klíma is a philosopher of will, action, and free spirit; he was the forerunner of Czech existentialism in its Sartrean form and, like him, was a man of literature.

It is not a rhetorical question to ask whether Klíma's era of deoessence has come. The continuous massive crisis of today's civilization makes us meditate about its bases, progress, development in society and the position therein of the individual. This century is marked by a boom in science and technology--but also by hypertrophied social structures, war, catastrophes, dictatorship, all of which suppress human individuality. Klíma has something to say to the present man. In spite of all his esoterica, he situated his man in our world, which is the world of falsehood, dissimulation, and materialized values, and sought thence the way to spiritual independence and freedom. It is the reader's responsibility to experience "a glimpse of deoessence". In any case Klíma's works clearly convey the message that only a sovereign and individually free man can be the basis for modern society and the creator of new values.

BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

As mentioned above, the second phase of the "idealistic" criticism of positivism in this country was in the period between the wars. In the early 20s this criticism was part of "the struggle for the freedom of Czech philosophy", that is, it was focused against the supremacy of positivism.

The philosophers who associated in the newly established journal Ruch filosofický (Philosophical Action), such as Vladimír Hoppe, Karel Vorovka, Ferdinand Pelikán, Tomá Trnka, Josef Barto, R.I. Malý, did not want to be limited by local traditions and authorities. They were united in the idea that positivism, with its dogmatic stiffness and inability to adjust to post-war conditions, was a burden upon the Republic, hindering the development of Czech philosophical thinking, precluding solutions to metaphysical problems, and incapable of working out the questions of religion and of values. They saw in positivism "a danger of sliding into agnosticism and self-denial". In their opinion, philosophy must not believe in any limitations that would forever prevent mankind from extending its knowledge.

The disputes about the orientation of Czech post-war philosophy had already begun in 1919, in Vorovka's reviews of the works of I. mavec, Základy sociální energetiky (Fundamentals of Social Energetics) and F. eracký's Teorie poznání a vdy (Theory of Cognition and Science) which attempted to follow Krejí. The disputes were largely stimulated by Emanuel Rádl's comments on "the post-war work of young Czech philosophers and the orientation of the Ruch filosofický.⁽³⁸⁾ A resolute opponent of positivism, Radl argued that their philosophical studies did not stem from topical national, social, and political problems, but returned to "Durdík's method", which was to speculate about the abstract questions of primitive philosophy. He saw this as the reason for their lack of interest in Masaryk.⁽³⁹⁾

The members of the movement around Ruch filosofický, as mentioned by Rádl, entered the philosophical sphere in the first or second decades of the century and by the early 20s had become mature thinkers. Karel Vorovka, only six years younger than Rádl, wrote about his attempts to deal with his tendencies to skepticism, which had been evoked as early as 1907 by the theories of eternal limits to human cognition. Only a little later Vladimír Hoppe tried to cope with the concept of "mechanically simplifying schemes" which were used both in exact sciences and in philosophy that attempted to be scientific. Ferdinand Pelikán published his contributions on freedom in physics, psychology and morality in eská mysl in the first years after the war.⁽⁴⁰⁾ After Ruch filosofický⁽⁴¹⁾ had been established, these tendencies in Czech philosophy seemed to become more unanimous and therefore more significant: philosophers shared their efforts to find a way from "spiritual reality" to the absolute. Their opinions emerged markedly when Trnka tried to establish a new philosophical journal, Filosofie (Philosophy), at the turn of the 20s.⁽⁴²⁾

The following chapters of this study present other representatives of Czech non-positivist philosophy who were of various orientations, some of whom were mentioned by Rádl in the treatise cited on modern Czech post-war philosophers. Karel Vorovka and Vladimír Hoppe were the most famous personalities among the philosophers concentrated around the journals Ruch filosofický and Filosofie.

Karel Vorovka (1879-1929) was a senior lecturer and later a professor of philosophy at Charles University. His studies of philosophical questions concerning natural sciences and mathematics appeared both in numerous journal articles in eská mysl, asopis eských matematik a fyzik (Journal of Czech mathematicians and Physicists) and Ruch filosofický and in a number of books: Úvahy o názoru v matematice (Considerations of Opinion in Mathematics, 1917) and Kantova filozofie ve svých vztazích k vdám exaktním (Kant's Philosophy and Its Relations to Exact Sciences, 1924). These studies dealt with such problems as conventionalism, probability and causality, the theory of relativity and the relationship between mathematics and logic. Taking into account the neoplatonic and gnostic philosophies and Mare's and Renouvier's insights, he formulated his own philosophical standpoint, namely, a theistic panpsychism: the world created and directed by God is a system of spiritual monads filled out with creative power. He does not consider philosophy to be a science but an expression of a philosopher's personal attitude towards the world. Philosophy is to be based on cognition (gnosis); it must transcend empirical, scientific understanding in varied ways, including intuition. His most important work, Skepse a gnose: Vyznání filosofické (Skepticism and Gnosis: A Philosophical Confession, 1921) was full of keen observations and awaits adequate evaluation. Vorovka summarized his contributions to the "controversy about Czech philosophy" in his book Polemos (1926). His Americká filosofie (American Philosophy, 1929), the first more detailed Czech survey of the history of philosophy in the U.S.A. from its beginning to the present, was published at the end of Vorovka's life.

Vladimír Hoppe (1882-1931) also sought a philosophical way to the transcendent which cannot be recognized by the intellect.⁽⁴³⁾ Plato, Kant, and the Christian mystics were his authorities and ideals. In his opinion, philosophy is the art of hearing one's own subconsciousness and thus the metaphysical depths of one's own person and of existence in general. In the end he was inspired by his religious beliefs to search for the spiritual rootedness of life and world and "their mysterious relation with the transcendent persons". From adolescence he saw an evidence of transcendent experience and the Transcendent primarily in his own "indubitable metaphysical experience".⁽⁴⁴⁾

In the beginning, Hoppe criticized natural sciences and rationalism. In his books Podstata, dosah a hodnota pírodovdeckeho poznání (Substance, Limits and Worth of Natural and Scientific Recognition, 1914) and Píroda a vda (Nature and Science, 1918) he supports the opinion, with reference to Boutroux, Mácha, Poincaré, Vaihinger, James, and others, that science is not able to penetrate the substance of reality. Its terms, laws, and theories present "means for our orientation towards the world, but they are not able to express the world and its depth." Science is mainly at a loss to say something of man himself, his spiritual life, values, desires and goals. By enabling the development of mechanistic opinion and technical education, modern civilization has broken all connection with a spiritual and moral universe." Positivism, however, highly values this science and its facts: it neither wants to, nor can, be liberated from its rule: "scientific philosophy" is a contradictio in adiecto. Nevertheless, philosophy has to endeavor to reach the absolute and life therein, life sub specie aeternitatis, with all its consequences for both individual and social lives.

In the second stage of his philosophical development, Hoppe supposed "spiritual philosophy" to be the way towards the "Absolute"--or at least, into its environs. He formulated its epistemology, some postulates, and ethical principles in his books: Základy duchovní filosofie (Foundations of Spiritual Philosophy, 1921), Pirozené a duchovní základy svta a ivota (Natural and Spiritual Foundations of World and Life, 1925), and Úvod do intuitivní a kontemplativní filosofie (An Introduction into Intuitive and Contemplative Philosophy, 1928). This philosophy attempted to enable man to be in contact with the "superindividual sphere", the "transcendental subject", and the "transcendental object", i.e., with spiritual, intellectual, transcendental worlds including the absolute Good, Beauty and Truth in the "center of the universe". Hoppe called this philosophy "transcendental idealism" or "transcendental realism".

He considered all the objections expressed against science to be valid as well for "intellectual transcendental consciousness" that gains experience through the a priori forms of sensuousness and the a priori intellectual categories which gather their content from sense data. Hence, Hoppe sought a way into the depths of the spiritual world through "affecting transcendental consciousness" in intuition and contemplation.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Thereby "we obtain irrational knowledge spontaneously as sudden inspirations and suggestions; these gush forth from our subconscious capabilities". Hoppe considered the recognition of the spiritual substance of essence to be a source for ethics as a theory about generally valid moral criteria and a source for aesthetics as a theory of beauty which is not only a subjective experience, but an objective entity.

Hoppe did not develop his own metaphysical opinion; his metaphysics is "propaedeutical and methodical in character". The epistemological and, mainly, psychological difficulties and antagonisms he had to face when explaining the ways of cognition in his spiritual philosophy supported his increasing orientation towards religion for which, as a matter of fact, he always found a fundamental need in our lives. In the end, philosophy was only a kind of religious propaedeutics for him. Hoppe's philosophical development culminates in "the leap of belief" mentioned by Kierkegaard and is described in Hoppe's book Pedpoklady duchovni filosofie a náboenské víry (Presumptions of Spiritual Philosophy and Belief) published posthumously in 1935. He considered mysticism, related to the super-individual sphere, to cohere with the Christian religion. In this stage of belief it is necessary "to interrupt one's connection both to scientific and rational philosophical hypotheses and to proceed with one's own subjective experiences and cognitions" into "worlds distant from that comprehended by the senses": that is, towards God--the depth of salvation--who is the final cause of individuals and history; towards the ideal of man continuously united with God as with Jesus. Although religious belief does not solve the mysteries of the Absolutum, it assures man that he does not commit an error in his transcendental experiences, and it allows him to concentrate on completing his individual and social life.⁽⁴⁶⁾

It should be added that, though the editors of Ruch filosofický were interested in problems of the natural sciences, others not very closely related to that orientation also co-operated.

Albína Dratvová (1892-1969) is the first woman mentioned in Czech history of philosophy.⁽⁴⁷⁾ She did not avow positivism--but called for an objective evaluation of the influence of positivism, including mainly Frantiek Krejí's work--upon Czech philosophical history. After her studies of philosophy, mathematics and physics at Charles University, Dratvová taught in Prague's secondary schools for some time and hence was constantly interested in problems concerning teaching philosophy at secondary schools. She tried to increase the level of teaching by publishing a textbook intended to substitute for Krejí's textbook. In 1931 she was appointed a senior lecturer of philosophy on the basis of her thesis, Problém kauzality ve fyzice (The Problem of Causality in Physics), and began to lecture at the Prague Faculty of Sciences. "The questions asked by natural scientists who are not satisfied with finding and describing phenomena, but who want to comprehend the substance of things more deeply"⁽⁴⁸⁾ represented the subject of her natural science philosophy. Filosofie a pírodovdecké poznání (Philosophy and Natural Scientific Knowledge) was her most important work (1939). It is a critical survey of present attempts at philosophical analyses of the process of understanding in the exact sciences. Dratvová finished her teaching career in the early 50s.