Philosophy as a specific cultural form had previously been studied mostly at the academic or universities and in theological seminaries and some religious orders. Until the early post-World War I years, the history of Czech "academic philosophy" is associated with the University of Prague. Students of the Faculty of Arts could major in philosophy; students from other faculties could at least audit philosophical lectures. The act of founding another Czech university in Brno in 1919 named after its founder, T.G. Masaryk, was a necessary prerequisite to establishing other centers of scholarly research.⁽²³⁹⁾

THE EARLY HISTORY

The Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts in Brno is listed along with the Departments of Classical, Slavonic, Germanic, and English philology, and History, in the 1920-1921 Summer Semester Catalogue of Professors and Departments of Masaryk University in Brno. The department had special concern for the philosophy students, but, at the same time, provided philosophy lectures for all other students of the Faculty.⁽²⁴⁰⁾

The first Ordinary Professor at the Department of Philosophy was Professor Otakar Zich (1879-1934). Previously, he had taught at Charles University in Prague, where he returned four years later.⁽²⁴¹⁾ Following his interest in aesthetics and the history of fine arts (musicology, the theory of fine arts and drama), he focused his lectures on specific issues of aesthetics, the theory of fine arts and psychology. His discussions of psychology were informed by his "psychological" approach to aesthetics: he considered "the great role of psychology (and physiology) in aesthetics," along with continuous attention to aesthetic and artistic experience, to be a basic feature of a scientific approach to aesthetics and to the theory of fine arts. Josef Tvrdý characterized Zich's philosophical position by ranking him with "the large group of students of Frantiek Krejí's general philosophical thought, without any dogmatic program." In the context of the history of Czech aesthetic thought, Zich belongs to the line running from Hostinský to Mukaovský.

Early in the history of the Faculty, A.I. Bláha and J. Tvrdý began giving lectures to students of philosophy. A.I. Bláha (1878-1960) came to the Faculty from the Czech Technical University in Brno and in 1922 was appointed an associate professor and in 1925 full professor of sociology. At the Faculty he was the Head of the Department of Sociology, which, under his leadership, became a center of extensive sociological research. In 1930 the first Czech professional sociological journal, Sociologická revue (Sociological Review) was published there.⁽²⁴²⁾ His Sociologie dlníka a sedláka (The Sociology of the Worker and the Peasant, 1925), Sociologie dtství (The Sociology of Childhood, 1927), and Sociologie inteligence (The Sociology of Intelligentsia, 1927) rank among the best works of Czechoslovak sociology in the period between the Wars.

In those works, Bláha conceived his own view of social reality and managed to

avoid both the extremes known in the history of philosophy, i.e., one-sided objectives denying the importance of subjective factors in history, and excessive subjectivism; within the confines of his determinist approach he thus managed to demonstrate the role played by the individual in the course of social events.⁽²⁴³⁾

Bláha labelled his system "federative functionalism", since he understood the so-called global society, the "order of orders", as a multifunctional organism whose functions aim at securing the needs of the social whole, each social unit performing its specific role.

Bláha interested his students in sociology by involving them in research undertaken by his department into the lifestyle of workers, unemployment and political leadership, as well as complex research into the lives of communities, etc. In the course of the 1930s, a group later called the "Brno Sociology School" formed around Bláha.⁽²⁴⁴⁾ Bláha also gave lectures in "practical philosophy", contributing thus to the education of young philosophy students (students of the Faculty of Law as well were obliged to take this course). He focused his course on basic problems of ethics to which he attended as well in some of his works, mostly in Filosofie mravnosti (The Philosophy of Morality, 1922). He professed a lay morality, considering religion a "purely human business." In these works, Bláha reveals his philosophical focus most immediately: he overcame positivism in order to replace it with critical realism (as a metaphysical-noetic position).

Emanuel Chalupný (1879-1958) gave irregular lectures at the Department of Sociology in the period between the Wars: in 1923 he became docent and in 1936 an associate professor of sociology. His lectures and research were focused on general sociology, the sociology of law and morality, the sociology of journalism, and the sociology of Czech history.⁽²⁴⁵⁾

Josef Tvrdý, after graduating from Charles University, became a grammar school teacher, first in Vykov (1901-1918), then in Brno. In 1922 he became an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts in Brno and in 1928 a full professor at Comenius University in Bratislava, where he stayed until 1938. Among his Brno students was Blahoslav Zboil (1901-1982), who graduated from the Charles University where he attended mostly Krejí's and Rádl's courses. Zboil became a grammar school teacher. In 1946 he became an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts in Brno; but could teach there only until 1949 (and then again in 1966-1969). He followed Tvrdý's ideas with his "undogmatic positivism" and his interest in the philosophy of values in his Problém hodnot I. Poznání, hodnocení a tvoení norem (The Problem of Values I, Knowing, Evaluating, and Creating Norms, 1947), as well as in the philosophy of fine arts and in reflections upon the "new religion" (as Zboil called human efforts to come close to perfection asymptotically, i.e., to get close to the qualities Christianity ascribed to God).

When Zich left for Prague he was succeeded by Mihajlo Rostohar (1879-1966) who became head of the Department of Philosophy. Rostohar, of Slovenian origin, came to Brno from Prague where he had become an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in 1911, having defended his work on logic, Teorie hypotetického soudu (Theory of Hypothetical Judgment) in 1910. He was appointed professor of philosophy in Brno in 1924, though his field was psychology. In 1926 he succeeded in establishing the Institute of Psychology at the Faculty. When an independent Department of Psychology was approved in 1931, Rostohar became full professor of psychology. Soon after he ceased giving philosophy lectures and gave up his position at the Department of Philosophy.⁽²⁴⁶⁾

Rostohar pioneered experimental psychology in Czechoslovakia, adhering to a holistic and structuralist approach to psychology. At a time when the notion of structure was fast making its way into philosophy and science, Rostohar used it in psychology as a "dynamic term" in order to explain the existence of psychological wholes as opposed to static terms (form, formation, complex), which describe their varieties. In his book, Psychologie jako vda (Psychology as Science), 1951, which summarizes his opinions, he defines psychological structure as "only such wholes in whose essence there is a creative principle, i.e., a potential formative power directed holistically." From the point of view of his approach to psychology, he critiqued Frantiek Krejí's system of psychology. He considered Krejí's theory of psychological parallelism to reflect the biological focus of that psychology and saw the concept of sensation as a psychological element as a "classical example of static atomizing Czech psychology."⁽²⁴⁷⁾

The most distinguished personalities at the Department of Philosophy in the period between the Wars were Vladimír Hoppe and J.L. Fischer. They have both been mentioned above in a different context; here it need only to be added that Hoppe was the head of the Department of Philosophy in 1927-1931. After his premature death the post was taken by J.L. Fischer, who occupied the post until 1939 and for a short time after the War.⁽²⁴⁸⁾

Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts in Brno was not treated only by expert philosophers. Among the professors teaching at other departments, Frantiek Novotoný and Karel Svoboda, both classical philologists, devoted some of their attention thereto. Novotný (1881-1960) became famous as a connoisseur and translator of Plato, O Platónovi I-III (Plato's works, I-III), 1948-1970. Svoboda (1886-1960) dealt with the history of classical aesthetic thought and gave courses in the history of Greek and Roman philosophy. Otakar Chlup (1875-1965), a professor of pedagogy also paid continuing attention to philosophy, as did Jan Uher (1891-1942), the second professor of pedagogy, who continued the current tradition of Czech pedagogy. The Russian intuitivist, N.O. Losskij, spent the summer term of 1936-1937 giving lectures in Russian philosophy, after which he left for Prague where he became a lecturer in Russian studies. Josef Kratochvíl, an associate professor at the Theological Faculty of Charles University and a member of St. Thomas Academy in Rome, asked in vain to be transferred to the Faculty of Arts in Brno, but he lived in Brno and was employed in the State Scholarly Library.

NORMATIVE LEGAL THEORY

A very important centre of philosophical work at the University of Brno in the period between the Wars was the Faculty of Law whose professors developed the so-called normative theory of law (the Brno school of pure juristic theory): Frantiek Weyr, Jaroslav Kallab, Jaromir Sedláek, Jan Loevenstein, Josef Krejí, Václav Chytil, Hynek Bulin, Vladimir Kube, and others.

The objectives and aims of the Brno school were characterized by Vladimir Kube. The movement was headed by Frantiek Weyr (1879-1951) who, before Hans Kelsen, in his first works, Pispvky k teorii nucených svazk (Some Contributions to the Theory of Forced Bonds), 1908, and Zum Probleme eines einheitlichen Rechtssystems (1908) laid the foundations of a juristic philosophical theory which met with a wide reception throughout the world, both in the positive and negative sense. What Weyr, Kelsen and their followers were after was, above all, making jurisprudence more scientific and creating a noetic and methodological approach to law, while focusing on a concrete juristic logic.

All these philosophers of law professed Kant's critical method, the idea of a dualism between cognition and volition. The philosophy of law should examine the a priori principles of juristic cognition, with an aim to applying this knowledge to any possible juridical experience: therefore, it should be a theory only of formal elements. Their thesis of the dualism between being and ought departs from Kant's dualism of nature and morality, and is based in Kant's statement from the Critique of Pure Reason that "Ought expresses a kind of necessity and connection which otherwise does not occur in nature." They showed that notions such as obligation, norm, etc., cannot be conceived in causal terms, but only in the normative ones. The classification of sciences follows from this. Adherents of this school of thought intended to complete Kant's philosophy by attempting to examine the noetic and logical foundations of normative sciences, assuming that Kant had carried out only a classification of natural sciences.

Having rigorously distinguished between the cognitive and the volitional spheres, they came to the conclusion that science should be limited only to cognition. They wanted to create a theory of positive law and put aside the question of how to create the law properly, considering this issue unscientific. In this, they were uncompromising juridical positivists, their characteristic feature being a resolutely anti-theoretical stance. Thus, they opposed all forms of the doctrine of natural law. It follows from their relativism that no absolute juridic form is conceivable. They pointed out the need for jurisprudence to be absolutely self-contained and hence rid of all that does not belong to the subject labelled as law.

It was only natural that among individual representatives of the school, all excellent lawyers, there were certain differences in opinions. Jaromír Sedláek (1885-1945), an outstanding expert in civil law and in Kant's transcendental philosophy, to a certain degree ceased to distinguish strictly between the cognitive and volitional spheres. Jaroslav Kallab (1879-1942), professor of criminal and international law and of the philosophy of law, denied consistently the absolute cleavage between these spheres and attempted to master the volitional spheres. (Kallab was inspired by Windelband, Münsterberg, and Rickert, and to a certain degree even by Bergson.)

Among the younger professors at the Faculty of Law in Brno who abandoned the normative school was Vladimír Kube (1908-1988), professor of civil law and the philosophy of law. At first Kube also professed Kant's transcendental philosophy and wrote a large work on it during World War II (as yet unpublished). As he changed his focus toward systematic philosophy (most of all due to Nicolai Hartmann's critical ontology, whose lectures he had attended in Berlin in 1932), he gradually crossed the "narrow confines of normative theory." As Kube himself put it, the deepest foundation of his philosophy was (in contrast with Hartman) an optimistic attitude to the world. It assumed the general tendency to attain perfection (i.e., normative ideas of truth and rightness, morality, law, and beauty) to be not only individual, but historical, that there is a similar tendency in humankind as a whole. He considered an optimistic position to be the most fundamental condition for philosophy, every science, all that man undertakes, the whole of human life: pessimism, in historical terms, amounts to a statement that all that man does lacks any sense. Kube thought that the dualism between the real world and the ideal one--the sphere of normative ideas--was based on this optimistic attitude toward the world. In turn, he thought that the unique human awareness of the ideal world conditioned the Ought (das Sollen) or obligation. In his view, the possibility of a positive answer to the "grand question of the freedom of will lay in the relation between dependence and autonomy or independence".

In his studies and works, Kube dealt with the ontology of law and its relation to the structure of law, with jurisprudence and ethics, with modern natural law and the attempt to master the sphere of law and volition rationally, and with the freedom of will. He wrote also as an historian and interpreter of modern European philosophy of law in Právní filosofie XX. století (The Juristic Philosophy of the 20th Century, 1947). After the coup d'etat in 1948 he had to leave the Faculty of Law; he taught there again in 1968-1970. After 1974 he taught as a visiting professor of philosophy of law at the University of Vienna, at which time his new works could be published only abroad.

Another member of the Faculty of Law in the period between the Wars was Karel Engli (1880-1961), a leading Czech economist and methodologist. He also took as a point of departure Weyr's and Kelsen's normative theory and Kant's transcendental philosophy in its Schopenhauerian interpretation. However, later he developed his own approach, namely his theory of orders of thought. Engli did not recognize any a priori notions or opinions: all our mental creations are historically conditioned (variable), purpose-oriented means which help us to explain and understand reality. The various categories and notions create systems or orders of thought with inner connections.

Until that time, the adherents to the Brno Normative School had distinguished between the "sphere of causal rationality" and the "sphere of normative rationality". Engli introduced the "sphere of teleological rationality", which enabled him to consider, along with the ontological-causal sciences and the normative sciences, also the teleological sciences. Their main feature was the fact that they arrange their notions or ideational contents according to their finality, that is, as purposes and means. All that can be said about reality is the result of sensations and ideas processed by the corresponding order of thought. Norms and postulates differ from judgments (which result from causal cognition) in that they express the human will in a certain manner.

Engli applied his teleological mode of observation to the functioning of the national economy and economic politics, dealing with both theoretically in his work, Soustava národního hospodáství (The System of the National Economy, 1937), and practically as Minister of Finance in several Czechoslovak governments and as Governor of the National Bank. After the war, Engli taught at Charles University, where he was appointed Rector. Upon the coup d'état in February 1948, he was forced to leave the university and, later, even Prague. Engli's thousand-page work Velká logika (Major Logic) also remains unpublished.

As the "hard" sciences made progress in the period between the Wars, and a new interdisciplinary field emerged, scientists attempted certain methodological generalizations and a kind of philosophical synthesis. As before World War I, it was especially the biologists who were most prone to philosophical speculations, notably at the Faculty of Sciences in Brno, Vladimir lehla and Josef Kíenecký.

Vladimír Úlehla (1888-1947) ranked among the leading Czechoslovak physiologists of plants. His philosophy abounds especially in works written for the general public: Zamylení nad ivotem (Reflections on Life, 1939, revised in 1941, 1947); and Za oponou ivota (Behind the Curtain of Life), 1940; ivot vesmírný (Cosmic Life, 1944); and Záhada smrti (The Enigma of Death, 1945), Úlehla proved to be a noetic optimist in these works: he even assumes that the ever increasing amount of knowledge in hard sciences will be the backbone of a new philosophy. "If matter tends to create life, the greatest art appears to be finding the conditions under which this tendency occurs." This statement suggests that Úlehla advocated conditionalism (he often quoted Max Verworn). He invented a principle to explain the essence of life: "the continuum, the unceasing stream of protoplasma going from one cell to another," explains all the conditions for its existence including its motion, assimilation, regeneration and procreation. He considered every natural event to be a set of conditions under which such an event can occur; the so-called cause is but one of the many conditions which until now had been absent in the set of factors conditioning the particular phenomenon.

Jaroslav Kíenecký (1896-1964) was one of the leading exponents of Czech genetics and eugenics. He emphasized the fact that in order to improve the state in which mankind finds itself it is necessary to create corresponding social and political conditions, to arrange social affairs in accordance with the "natural law of mutual aid". In his view, humanity and social ethics had their roots in Nature itself (Boj o ivot a dohoda k ivotu (The Struggle for Survival and the Agreement to Life, 1940).