Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue (1850–1937)

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MASARYK, TOMÁŠ GARRIGUE
(1850–1937)

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a Czech statesman and philosopher, and president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935, was born in Hodonín, Moravia. His political career belongs to history; of interest to students of philosophy is the fact that he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna from 1872 to 1876 under Franz Brentano. He spent the year 1876–1877 at Leipzig, where Wilhelm Wundt was his teacher and Edmund Husserl and Richard Avenarius were fellow students. In 1879 Masaryk became Privatdozent at Vienna, submitting Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung (Vienna, 1881) as his habilitation thesis. In 1882 Masaryk became professor of philosophy at the Czech University in Prague, where he soon made his mark as a politician and writer in Czech. Základové konkretné logiky (The foundations of concrete logic; Prague, 1885; German translation, Versuch einer concreten Logik, Vienna, 1887) and Otázka sociální (The social question; Prague, 1898; German translation, Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus, Vienna, 1899) were followed by books on Czech history and politics and by an extensive Russian intellectual history, first published in German as Russland und Europa (2 vols., Jena, Germany, 1913; translated by Eden and Cedar Paul as The Spirit of Russia, 2 vols., London, 1919). World War I and the presidency of Czechoslovakia put an end to Masaryk's academic pursuits, but a book of memoirs, Světová revoluce (The world revolution; Prague, 1925; English translation, edited by H. W. Steed, The Making of a State, London, 1927) and Hovory s T. G. Masarykem (Conversations with T. G. Masaryk; 3 vols., Prague, 1931–1935) by Karel Čapek (English translations by M. and R. Weatherall, President Masaryk Tells His Story, London, 1934, and Masaryk on Thought and Life, London, 1938) reformulate his convictions impressively.

Masaryk was a practical philosopher who believed that philosophy should not only contemplate the world but also try to change it. He thus had little interest in problems of epistemology or cosmology. In his early life he reacted against German idealism and accepted British empiricism (David Hume) and French positivism (Auguste Comte). Later he argued for a type of realism that he called concretism. In every act of knowing, he believed, the whole man takes part. Concretism acknowledges not only reason but also the senses, the emotions, and the will—the whole experience of our consciousness. It is something like William James's radical empiricism without the exceptional experiences admitted by James. But Masaryk's main interest was in sociology and philosophy of history.

Masaryk's realism was combined with a deep religious belief—Masaryk was a theist who found the Unitarianism of his American wife congenial—and a strong conviction of the immutable difference between right and wrong. Masaryk's thinking centered on the crisis of civilization caused by the decay of religion. He diagnosed the diseases of modern man (indifference, suicidal mania, violence, war, etc.) and prescribed remedies for them. He believed that sociology is the foundation of any further cultural advance but that its method must not be purely genetic and descriptive. Teleology, or explanation by purpose, is legitimate. The aim of history is the realization of the ideal of humanity. Masaryk's humanism was not, however, merely humanitarianism, although he often spoke of democracy as another term for his ideal. In spite of his sympathies for the concrete demands of socialism, Masaryk remained an individualist who disapproved of all forms of collectivism. He criticized Karl Marx as a blind worshiper of determinist science. Nevertheless, Masaryk exalted the role of the right kind of science. In Základové konkretné logiky, his philosophically most ambitious book, he classified the sciences and showed how they are internally related and coordinated. The task of philosophy is to create a worldview based on the results of the sciences. Masaryk desired a new "Advancement of Learning" that would save man from intellectual and moral anarchy.

Masaryk assigned an important role in the realization of his ideal to his own nation, the Czech, and interpreted its history, remembering the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren as a preparation for this task. He thoroughly criticized Russia for being a breeding ground for all the European diseases, particularly romanticism and materialism. Fëdor Dostoevsky, whom he both admired and rejected as a thinker, was a lifelong concern. Masaryk always expressed the deepest sympathies for the English and American tradition of empiricism and moralism and, in politics, turned his nation resolutely toward the Anglo-Saxon West. In 1918 he liberated the Czechs not only politically but also intellectually.

Bibliography

For information on Masaryk as a thinker, see the bibliography and articles in Festschrift Thomas G. Masaryk zum 80. Geburtstag, 2 vols., edited by B. Jakowenko (Bonn, 1930); W. P. Warren, Masaryk's Democracy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1941); and René Wellek, "Masaryk's Philosophy," in Essays on Czech Literature (The Hague: Mouton, 1963).

René Wellek (1967)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy