The paper deals with the role of irony in the thought of Blaise Pascal. The author proposes to distinguish two types of irony in Pascal’s work. The first type – offensive irony – can be found in The Provincial Letters, Pascal’s polemics with the principles of Jesuit moral teachings. The use of ironic strategy allows Pascal to criticize efficiently the Jesuit argumentation and the problematic consequences of their moral values. In Pascal’s Pensées, the function of irony changes radically. Pascal’s description of the position of human beings can be compared to the irony of situation, represented usually by The Oedipus King by Sophocles. Irony thus becomes a perspective which depicts the paradoxes of human existence and intensifies the emotional impact of Pascal’s work.

Durkheim’s political interest stems from an analysis of anomies of the late 19th century society. He credits the anomies to the changes in the organization of labor division in the society as well as to the fact that man is a being with ever increasing demands. In this respect he appeals to all social classes to abide by the rule of moderateness. – Durkheim poses the question if sociologists can contribute to social reform. In his view the most important contribution is their scientific work, i.e. an analysis and a description of social reality. Such activity does not qualify them as politicians. In politics, a scientist can only act as a citizen or possibly an adviser and an educator.

This paper contains preliminary notes on an interpretation of Hegel’s political philosophy. It concentrates on the last part of The Philosophy of Right, i. e. sphere of the ethical life. A thesis defended in the paper is that it is Hegel’s notion of bureaucracy which is crucial for the interpretation. Concepts are employed of civil society and public sphere by J. Habermas, as well as of habitus by P. Bourdieu in order to highlight fragmented character of the civil society. Therefore, the bureaucracy is given major role in realization of “the concrete universal” by means of both public administration and parliamentary politics. The centrality of bureaucracy in political integration is therefore called administrative nationalism.

The study is about the ontology late Martin Heidegger. The work analyses mainly category Lichtung and category Sein and relation L ichtung and Sein. Lichtung is in Heidegger’s work “The End of Philosophy“ ALETHEIA , also truth in early ancient meaning, mainly in Parmenides trought. Me study anylyses also form good method according to Heidegger.

This year it is 130 years since the birth and 80 years since the death of Karel Vorovka (3/2/1879 – 15/1/1929) as well as 80 years since the publication of his American Philosophy. The author shows the way that led Vorovka to this work: his strong orientation to western thinking, his attendance at the 6th international philosophical congress taking place at Harvard University in Cambridge near Boston (13–17/9/1926) and his personal and professional relationships with Anglo-American philosophers. It presents Vorovka’s “trip reports” from American meetings and the results of his studies: reviews of some Harvard philosophers’ works (R. B. Perry, W. A. Hocking, C. I. Lewis) and journal articles on American neo-realism, personalism and behaviorism, which were eventually included in his American Philosophy.

Kosík’s work Dialectics of the Concrete (1963) attracted great attention both in Czechoslovakia and abroad. Jan Patočka was among those who responded to the book in 1960s. One of the reasons for his interest was the fact that Kosík used elements of Heidegger’s philosophy to overcome dogmatic Marxism. Patočka pointed out that Kosík had not adopted the ontological intention of Heidegger’s analyses of everydayness, which creates a certain tension in his work. Kosík’s dialectics of the concrete, which stems from an analysis of everyday practice, never became, in Patočka’s opinion, a dialectic of real life.

The article deals with some problems that concern the reliability of scientific knowledge and the rationality of scientific theories’ acceptance. The central attention is paid to the discussion between realists and instrumentalists and the controversies over literally interpretation of theories and their ontological commitments. The author examines one famous argument for realism (no miracle argument). She engages in the problems to which the argument is exposed (the circularity and the pesimmistic induction) and considers the possibilities to avoid them. The author concludes by claiming that even though no offered strategy is able to withstand effectively the pessimism that arises fromthe history of science, there is no reason to reject the realistic thesis.

Between 1976–1986, when Lubomír Nový was banned from pedagogical work at the Brno Faculty of Arts, he would write “obituaries for the living” to celebrate their jubilees. They were written for “jolly narrow circles” so that the honored people could learn something about themselves while alive, as he said. We present an excerpt from a published collection Obituaries for the Living (Brno 1988) that was dedicated in august 1980 to one of his closest friends.

This commemorative essay brings back the 1960s, the time when reform Marxism flourished due to the work of the faculty members of the Department of Philosophy and Logic. The author also focuses on Jiří Gabriel and his colleagues´ work in philosophy of religion and religion studies.

The essay presents a brief overview of the three dacades of Jiří Gabriel’s publishing activity, as recorded by the author of this essay. The first decade – the 1980s – is characterized by organizing conferences and publishing symposia of presented papers. The 1990s brought great synthetic works. The first decade of the 21st century is marked by Gabriel’s focus on long-postponed themes from the history of Czech philosophy.

The aim of this short memorial is to point out a courageous act happened a few years ago. Jiří Gabriel, followed with his collaborates, succeeded editing an alphabetically arranged Slovník českých filozofů (Dictionary of Czech Philosophers), Brno 1998, including personalities representing German, Slovak (etc.) thinkers, bound to Czech lands. The Dictionary appeared in the situation after the revolutionary change in 1989 when a part of the society supported the Czech nationalism disguised in „searching the national identity“.

This contribution tries to show that it is not easy to present something as a “philosophical dimension”, to say nothing about its “national specificity”. For the young, philosophy seems to be like a “serpent from the Paradise”. The author remembers the late 1940s at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University and, in three short chapters (3–5), concisely annotates the following decennia in the field. The last third of the 20th century can be characterized as a steep increase in scientific knowledge where the majority of ontological and epistemological questions were better answered scientifically than it had been the case with philosophy of all the preceding periods. It may be a contemporary problem to find something like a “key” (not only a “cue”) for one’s own life, something what has been called “wisdom”, or a “guide in life”. The miracle of life started a rather long time before the so-called Phanerozoicum. Mere speculations about life and the meaning of the Universe do not lead anywhere as such. On the other hand, ethics and the analysis of language can still be useful as “philosophy”. The Czech intellectual tradition has always conserved a deep interest in an interpretation of the social and cultural reality of the country. The Department of Philosophy at the Masaryk University has seen it as an exhortation to evaluate this trend for more than half a century. Philosophically, is it enough?

When professor Jaromír Bartoš suddenly died in 1972 the author of this essay lost the supervisor of his diploma thesis on Condorcet. With a new theme for his thesis focusing on the beginnings of Czech philosophical thinking in the early phase of national revival he approached Jiří Gabriel, who agreed to take charge. The thesis focused on an interesting figure of Czech Josephianism, the enlightened clergyman Václav Stach and his educative Handbook of a Folk Teacher, which reflected contemporary European philosophical ideas. The thesis was successfully defended and thanks to Jiří Gabriel partly published in the Proceedings of the university. This work is an expression of gratitude for the salvation and for the possibility to publish by a 1973 graduate and a committed teacher of philosophy and social sciences at Brno grammar schools.

To celebrate Jiří Gabriel‘s anniversary, the author presents the conception of rationality by Hans Albert, seeing some parallels between the two thinkers. Rationality, as understood by H. Albert, does not just cover a segment of reality. It is capable of sensitive and adequate understanding of all dimensions of the world, life and human life. Rationality is not ethically neutral. It can initiate engaged action to carry out what has been found reasonable. Rationality as a simple methodological principle bridges the illusory abyss between sciences and humanities. Rational discourse is not compatible with religious discourse – viz Albert‘s dispute with G. Ebeling and H. Küng.

Intellectual contacts of Polish philosophers with Jan Patočka date back to the 30s of the 20th century. They developed in the times when the phenomenological movement in Poland had already been established, mainly as a result of the activity of Roman Ingarden, which is why the interest in Patočka’s ideas and further contacts with him enhanced Polish phenomenological thought. In the newest history of Polish philosophy, the presence of Patočka’s ideas, including his original interpretation of phenomenology, has been little studied. – Polish contacts with Patočka were initiated by Tadeusz Kroński and Irena Krońska still before the Second World War. In the post-war years they continued and developed into warm bonds of friendship, mostly owing to Krońska herself and Kroński’s friends and colleagues: Bronisław Baczko and Leszek Kołakowski. Close relations between Patočka and the Polish philosophical community owe much to Tadeusz Kotarbiński. The ideas of Slavonic cooperation were close to Kotarbiński’s heart. He met Patočka in Prague, hosted him in Warsaw and in the 70s openly appealed to Polish and Czechoslovakian authorities to stop political persecution of the Czech philosopher.

This paper presents a short reflection of the life and work of Vítězslav Gardavský, who was one of the most important representatives of the Czech marxistic version of dialogical philosophy in the second Half of the 20th Century.

Voltaire criticized clericalism and religion. Not religion per se, but its superstitious forms. He found those in nearly all religions known to him (except for Chinese religion). Christianity became the focus of his interest. However, even the worst religion was, according to Voltaire, better than atheism, accompanied by a loss of the sense of moral value. Voltaire tried to design a new form of religion – deism. It meant respect for the supreme being, which is in its totality beyond human comprehension. We know, though, that the supreme being provided nature with eternal laws and us with reason and moral sense, which are necessary requirements for the existence of cohesive society.