Abstract

On the basis of contemporary Czech and Slovak texts and correspondence between Czechoslovak scientists and Polish praxeologists, the study shows how praxeology, a scientific discipline that deals with human action and is primarily associated with the Polish environment and the prominent philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981), was viewed in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. The analysis also defines the factors that shaped the newly emerging “Czechoslovak” praxeology. One such factor was Polish–Czechoslovak (or rather Czech–Polish and Slovak–Polish) scientific relations, especially contacts with the Institute of Praxeology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The article argues that a specific “national” form of Czechoslovak praxeology crystallised in Czechoslovakia around the turn of the 1970s. Although it was based on the Polish model, the habitus of certain Czechoslovak scholars to draw on works of Marxism–Leninism, the involvement of communist ideologues in the debate about the form and future of praxeology, and the historical context of the emerging normalisation after 1968 made Czechoslovak praxeology a peculiar mix of original Polish ideas and Czechoslovak scientific practice.