Abstract
The paper will focus on the interpretation and deconstruction of the ideas of two key Czech political thinkers: Tomáš G. Masaryk (1850-1937), the first Czechoslovak president, and Jan Patočka (1907- 1977), a phenomenological philosopher who became the first spokesperson of the Charter 77 dissident movement.
Analysis of their ideas can thus provide insights into attitudes which in some parts of Czech society were highly influential or sometimes even decisive. Both these authors focused on the Great War as the key event of the 20 th century: Masaryk called it a "World Revolution" of "democracy" against "theocracy" (monarchism) and he also understood it as a chance to create a new, Czechoslovak state (he was active in the separatist movement and the founding of the Czech armed "legions" that fought the Central Powers and then the Bolsheviks).
Patočka, using as a basis Junger's description of WWI, describes it as the real face of "peaceful" scientific and technocratic society. In our analysis of these two key authors we will focus on the reconstruction of the Czech relationship to empires and imperialisms and we will try to include a post-colonial perspective.
We will show how Masaryk manages to organize some kind of "moral exchange": he declares the empires of the Entete to be innocent and legitimizes them using universalist rhetoric if they include the Czechoslovak "national interest" as part of their effort. He aims to be on an equal footing with the most developed European countries and he refrains from criticism of them.
With Patočka we find very radical criticism of Civilisation, but still without an imperial component and with a highly Eurocentric background and implications. In both cases, we see a similar pattern: radical criticism, which is unable to focus on the imperial dimension as the expression of the Czech historical experience and strategy.