Abstract
The paper systematically examines the concept of education in the life and work of the Czech writer, journalist and national revivalist Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821-1856), particularly in his political journalism and personal correspondence. It argues against the established picture of Havlíček''s thought as essentially down-to-earth and non-philosophical, and it attempts to develop its hidden motifs for the present-day philosophy of education, democratic citizenship and politics.
The key to understanding of Havlíček''s concept of education is his extraordinary gift of the critical word and civic-political prudence, however, in the deeper sense of the word, it is Havlíček''s creative struggle between the Enlighement''s skepsis of the absolutizing common sense and the crisis of religious-existential faith as unrealizable love.