A Dead End of Modern Philosophy? : The Reception of H. Bergson's Philosophy in Czechoslovak Thinking
Abstract
The philosophy of Henri Bergson was popular, almost fashionable in pre-war Paris. This article poses the question how and to what extent Bergson's philosophy was reflected in the years 1918-1948 by the Czechoslovak philosophers of the time (T.
Trnka, F. Pelikán, K.
Vorovka, F. Mareš or V.
Hoppe). The influence of Bergson is evidenced by Trnka's book titled A Dead End of Modern Philosophy (Moderní filosofie ve slepé uličce, 1924), in which Trnka offers an independent evaluation of the state of philosophy of his time: Bergsonian intuitive irrationalism, Trnka claims, has led philosophy to a critical noetic peak, after which a collapse transpires.
The goal of this paper is to shed light on certain tendencies of intuitivism, irrationalism and individualism in Inter-War Czechoslovak Philosophy; using as examples the two aforementioned authors, F. Mareš and V.
Hoppe, we want to show how (and if) Trnka's "Blind Alley" appears in their philosophy, and how (and if) this "collapse" indirectly forms their philosophy.