Slovak Academic Philosophy: Its Origins, Development and Current State The paper introduces the foreign reader to the main factors associated with the emergence of Slovak academic philosophy as well as to the ways in which it has developed, and also to those factors that have complicated or delayed its progress since 1921 when the Faculty of Philosophy, along with its Philosophical Seminars, began functioning at the newly-founded University of Comenius (1919), up to the present day.

The author points to the power of traditionalism in Slovak cultural – spiritual milieu and to the rise of the intellectual modernity in the Slovak thought in 17th – 20th centuries . There is a continuity of alternating between tradition and modernity. The problem of this philosophy remains “idolatrism”. Regarding the problem of receptivness, the author points to the theoretical and methodological standpoints of structuralism with its principle of immanence. In conclusion the author examines the problem of the (...) marginality of “national” philosophy. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the concept of work in Slovak Marxist–Leninist philosophy and ethics in the second half of the twentieth century by referencing, in particular, Furnham’s critical assessment of the relationship between left-wing ideology and the values of work ethic. The author comes to the conclusion that, on the one hand, Marxist–Leninist ideology and the practice of building socialism made the notion and phenomenon of work into an ideological fetish; on the other hand, however, the real value of work (...) and its contribution to the development of society was depreciated. Instead of bringing about the liberation of work all that it engendered was a new form of its alienation. (shrink)

SummaryThe author studies the form of philosophical optimism in Slovak Lutheran ethics in the first half of the 19th century in the views of Ján Kollár and Ján Chalupka. Herder’s philosophy of history and his philosophy of historical progress significantly influenced Slovak Lutheran ethics of the given period. In the author’s view, Kollár and Chalupka mainly appreciated human history as progress in all parts of life and refused glorification of the past. However, they did not limit their assessment (...) to a positive evaluation of the present; they used one’s own mistakes and faults to appeal to moral development of man and placed to the forefront the belief in a better future of mankind in the form of humanity. (shrink)

The history of Slovak philosophy can be reconstructed along two basic lines: along the line of the school philosophy, developed at existing high schools, colleges and universities, as well as along the other line - that of philosophical thinking. The researches should focus not only on professional philosophy, but also on the forms of applied philosophical thinking as a part of the community's culture. The standpoint of the researches should be non-ideological, non-national, non-ethnical. "The Slovak philosophy" is related (...) to all philosophical expressions, historically present in Slovak region or in Slovak culture. This option as an alternative to previous paradigmatic scheme, used by Marxist historiography. It represents a methodological issue par excellence, demanding a special attention and also theoretical and methodological selfreflection of the historians of philosophy. (shrink)

This study focuses on the foundations of Slovak critical environmentalism laid by work of Juraj Kučírek, who is also the author of the first ever monograph focused on the philosophical reflection of the causes and possible consequences of the global environmental crisis in Slovakia. Kučírek pointed out the need to combine reflection on subsequent solution of the global environmental crisis with the problems of social inequality and oppression. This unconventional approach in the context of the Slovak public and (...) academic discourse of the 1990s he termed as environmental anthropocentrism. Thus, he had a critical approach to biocentric concepts, which gained a dominant position in the Slovak environmental discourse. His work was followed by Ivan Dubnička, who extended Kučírek´s position to include cultural, political, and religious aspects of the causes of environmental devastation. His research was focused on the relationships of sociobiological and sociocultural determinants that shape human behaviour as a result of biological and cultural evolution. Based on evolutionism and anthropocentrism, he developed the concept of environmental pragmatism. Concepts of both are characterized by the critique of biocentric egalitarianism principle and the emphasis on democratic and human rights aspects of environmental devastation, as well as social and political causes of these phenomena. (shrink)

The authors examine the Slovak ethos of plebeian resistance to the First World War in several of its forms. First, they examine intellectual forms of resistance against war, against its Christian justification. Several Slovak authors emphasized that the First World War was in direct contradiction to Christian ethics, asserting that it served as proof of the failure of all European nations and their elites, who were proud of their humanity and ability to solve problems peacefully. Secular authors who (...) based their opposition to the First World War on universal cultural and moral values represented the second form of resistance. After the end of the war, they also expected the equal rights of the Slovak ethnic group in the new post-war situation. The third form of resistance is literature, and the authors of the article focused mainly on Milo Urban’s novel Živý bič (1927) as the most important anti-war novel of Slovak interwar literature reflecting wartime events in the Orava village of Ráztoky. (shrink)

In the exmanination of the intellectual life, including the history of philosophy, at the turn of the centuries in Slovakia it is illuminating to see this period from the perspective of modernization. Not only it discerns still unknown aspects of the historical events of that time, but it also sheds a new light on those, which were due to ideological reasons neglected or overestimated and even glorified. The modernization in Slovakia, although belated, less cretaive and more imitating, brought about the (...) structuralizationa and the institutionalization of the Slovak society, contribu_ting to its rapid development. In philosophy it gave rise to the plurality of new streams and ideas, and many discussions and disputes concerning the future deve_lopment of philosophy, the problems of science and religion, truth and faith, morals etc. It thus hepled in creating new presuppositions for the development of philosophy in Slovak society. (shrink)

The Slovak sociologist Alexander Hirner has been practising in the 1940's and 1950's also philosophy . Thanks to him in the fisrt Slovak Catholic oriented philosophical journal the domination of the religious philosophy was overthrown and the journal became largely pluralistic, allowing for more discussion and criticism. In the history of philosophy Hirner focused on the Enlightenment in Slovakia. He paid special attention to the efforts of its main representatives, trying to articualte their own philosophical stands and views. (...) Due to his attempts a discussion of methodological problems of the history of Slovak philosophy began, in which he stood for objectivity in approaching historical facts, rejecting at the same time schematism, sociologism and nihilism in understanding and evaluation of the philosophical developments in Slovakia. In 1942 he published an essay on values, one of the first works in Slovakia introdu_cing this problematics. In the totalitarian period his views conflicted with those of the political authorities. As a conseqence in 1958 - 1966 he became a victim of a politically arranged trial. (shrink)

The leitmotif of the article is an analysis and interpretation of disputes about the nature of Slovak philosophy in the contexts of the formation of individual philosophical generations from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. In the content core of the article, the dispute is about the nature of Slovak philosophy in the first generation of its representatives, which was represented by the followers of the so-called “Štúr School”. As a follow-up to (...) this dispute, the article analyzes the ideological confrontations of followers of religious and secular philosophical thought in Slovakia during the first Czechoslovak republic. It is a dispute between followers of classical (European) positivism and, partly, Masarykism with the representatives of contemporary religious philosophy in Slovakia. At the end of the paper, the trend of disputes about the nature of Slovak philosophy is outlined even in the period after the Stalinist, and, later, the so-called normalization indoctrination of Slovak philosophy. (shrink)

The present study explores the contribution of the Slovak philosophical school, which uniquely grasped the European and Czechoslovak heritage of phenomenology and existential philosophy. In the text, the authors present a congenial and undeniably up-to-date concept of syncriticism as developed by Jozef Piaček and analyse its contribution to Slovak philosophical discourse and more broadly, in the dialogue of phenomenology and existential philosophy in Slovakia. In the study, the authors also examine the cultural-philosophical starting points and specifics of (...) class='Hi'>Slovak modern philosophy and postmodern thinking as phenomena of the Central European intellectual space in the context of thinking about the unique and inspiring project of perichronosophy as a thematic invariant developed at philosophical workplaces in Central Europe (Comenius University Bratislava, Trnava University Trnava, Charles University Prague, Masaryk University Brno). Jozef Piaček has been affiliated with the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University for many years, studied under Jan Patočka and is an expert on Husserl’s phenomenology. He has continuously developed a unique philosophical approach involving syncriticism and perichronosophy, which continues to resonate with his students at academic institutions in Slovakia and abroad. Piaček published several monographs and papers on the subject of syncriticism. The platform of living philosophy is his concept of a digital philosophical encyclopaedia, where he archives all publication outputs on the subject of the philosophy of syncriticism. This text will present Piaček’s concept of perichronosophy and concordance in Slovak philosophy, more broadly in phenomenology, as well as in the context of Patočka’s themes (philosophy as care for the soul in the village) with implications for the philosophy of education and philosophical therapy (dasein-analysis). (shrink)

In the1960s, texts by the prominent German philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno were translated into the Czech and Slovak language. This was only possible due to the more relaxed social and political atmosphere of those years. The translated essays were published in professionally-oriented periodicals. This paper is aimed to map and evaluate the reception of Adorno’s translated works in Czechoslovakia. Although these texts embraced above all Adorno’s work in the sociology of philosophy, aesthetics of literature and musicology, this (...) paper is mainly focused on Adorno’s musicological texts. Albeit mostly regarded as an original and extremely versatile author in Czechoslovakia, Adorno was also criticised on the background of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. In order to evaluate the reception of Adorno’s ideas in the Czech and Slovak environment, it is methodologically necessary to adopt a broader aesthetic-philosophical perspective that enables us to account for Adorno’s endorsement of the Marxist philosophy pursued at Frankfurt School of Philosophy. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to provide a short overview of the research that gradually culminated in the concept of cognitive biology. To a certain extent it can be compared to a prelude: as the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it, “a musical section or movement introducing the theme or chief subject (as of a fugue or suite) or serving as an introduction to an opera or oratorio.” At first glance, this may seem to downplay the importance of the (...) pre-cognitive biology period, but the opposite is true. Some preludes (consider, for example, La Traviata or Carmen) are as rich and beautiful as the acts that follow. We believe this is the case with the story culminating in the birth of cognitive biology, and we present it here in the form of an annotated (and somewhat virtual) interview with its leading actor, Ladislav Kováč. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to examine ethical and moral philosophical thinking in Slovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, with particular emphasis on the content of the journal Filozofia published by the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA). This study analyses how political and social transformations, especially after February 1948, influenced philosophical discourse, paying particular attention to the development and reformulation of ethical and moral concepts. The main hypothesis of the paper is that, despite the dominant (...) influence of Marxist-Leninist philosophy in the period under study, efforts to criticize and reinterpret this ideology gradually emerged in the 1960s, while alternative approaches began to take shape. The first part of the study focuses on an analysis of the journal Filozofia from its beginnings in 1946 to the end of the 1950s. The second part examines how the authors gradually revised the dogmatic principles of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, criticized Stalinist distortions, and opened the way for new ethical and moral approaches. The controversies that arose in this context reflect an effort to overcome ideological limitations and find new ways of philosophical thinking in a period of fundamental socio-political change. (shrink)

The term philosophical generation, or generations, covers one such initiative in new readings in the history of 20th century philosophy, ethics, and moral philosophy. It focuses its attention on interactions between philosophers as personalities, as teachers of philosophy, and their student-philosophers. It is interested in the interactions that shape the tradition of philosophical thinking and ethics in such unique environments as university departments, institutes of academies, scientific societies, journal editorial offices, or publishing houses. The present study provides an analysis of (...) the existing state of the generational discourse in a historical-philosophical context starting from the 20th century. It focuses on the prospects and pitfalls of the applicability of this lens when examining Slovak philosophical and ethics work in the 20th century and today. It brings thinking about the extent to which the given approach could contribute to existing reflections of our philosophy and ethics and the effort to answer the question of our philosophical identity. It would make possible to point out perspectives and, at the same time, the pitfalls of grasping the formation of philosophical generations in the Slovak academic environment. (shrink)

The paper examines the project of applying the so called "philosophy of humanity" in Slovak political life, which was made public before the elections in 1946 by the follower of Lossski´s philosophy of intuitive realism, Slovak philosopher J. Dieška. He taught, that this philosophy of humanity is predestined to become a partisan philosophy of democracy, as it unites all citizens by its ability to synthethize and by its ideas of collaboration, love, and non-revolutionary resolution of social problems. Dieška (...) characterises this philosophy as "ideal-realism". i. e. a worldview, which is not a pure materialism, spiritualism or realism, but a synthesis of all of them. Dieška´s conception was not offered a possibility of verification by the practice. It should be seen on the background of the current ideological and political conflicts as looking for the way out of the previous developments and also as an attempt to offer an alternative to ever growing influence of the materialistic worldview and the leftist ideological orientations. (shrink)

The paper is an introduction into the concept of intuition and intuitivism in the philosophy of N. O. Lossky, considered as a leading personality of the Russian philosophy of the first half of the XIXth century and who also has been affiliated with Slovakia: in 1941 – 45 he was the chair of the department of philosophy at The Slovak University in Bratislava. Nevertheless, the Slovak philosophers did not succeed yet in coming to terms with his philosophy and (...) that led to many misunderstandings. The background of Lossky’s philosophy was the specific character of Russian intellectual tradition. Among others in his philosophy this tradition reached its zenith. The argumentation of his monistic noetics was based on his belief, that all forms of valid knowledge are an immediate insight of objects in their originals. Due to this character of the theory of knowledge it is possible to preserve the vital, dynamic nature of reality and to conceive of subject as vital, living and creative being. Lossky tries to overcome the cleavage between knowledge and being, so characteristic for modern epistemology and science, by his doctrine of the noetic coordination of the subject and the object as the presupposition of the consciousness and knowing. The being, which determines the process of knowing, is not transcendent to this process, it is rather a part of it. (shrink)

The author analyses the development of the views of A. Sirácky from the second half of the 1960s on the role of philosophy and its relationship to the newly established sociology. It was a period, when the most part of the humanities felt themselves free and independent. During the normalisation period this process was violently interrupted. The author's point is, that A. Sirácky as a representative of Slovak intellectual elite also took part in this process, enforced from outside. In (...) spite of certain criticism against Marxist dogmatism he himself in his conception pursued consequently a dogma, according to which both sociology and philosophy are ideological disciplines. (shrink)

I am not trying to present a full concept of professional ethics of an academic. I would like to focus on philosophical and ethical reflection of the specific area of an academic work in Slovakia. Almost two hundred years ago, the Slovak enlightenment philosopher Ján Feješ (1764 - 1823) responded to the situation of his era and he stated that a reviewer must, in the given area, be even better educated than the author himself. A different example can be (...) found in Honoré de Balzac’s great novel Lost Illusions where he also described journalistic practice of the first half of the 19th century. Part of the novel was based on his own experience with acrimonious critique. The situation concerning, for example academic reviewing in Slovakia in the present day is, possibly in some instances, even more critical than Feješ or Balzac suggested. This no longer concerns the quality of papers and book of essays but the number of works published; and evaluation of academics is partly dependant on whether they have published in a reviewed or a non-reviewed book, indexed journals, worldly known publishers, etc. There has to be a just requirement placed on critical reviews, as Feješ and others cautioned, and that is that they should not be informative reviews only for the sake of someone getting a reviewed work but truly critical reviews from people qualified in the given area of academic subjects and the aim of which should not lie in settling scores or expressing personal preferences but a constructive view of the issue. The problem in Slovak academic community (especially in humanities and social sciences), however, lies in the fact that critical reviews are not considered a challenge for discussion or polemics but are shifted to the personal level including settling scores with the critical reviewer. Quoting and referencing is another problematic area in Slovak academic life, which, in the present period, has almost become a fetish, as it is a criterion of qualification enhancement and evaluation of academics. That is why quotations and references are artificially made for colleagues, friends and acquaintances, or even already published works are faked to contain quotes and references for the needs of future qualification enhancement. To summarise, I would like to propose three aims which could become a part of professional ethics of the academics (in Slovakia). (shrink)

Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (eds.), Experimental Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2008, 244 + x pp., ISBN 978-0-19-532326-9.