Abstract
If philosophy is to remain alive, it should constantly ask what it means to us and whether it still means anything to us. To do this, however, it is necessary to awaken once more the need to philosophize.
Philosophy was originally born out of wonder, which is a sudden change in the way people see and the world itself appears. As an example of the awakening of the need for philosophy through the lost experience of wonder, an early poetic composition by Bohuslav Reynek brings to mind precisely the wonder of being.
If we awaken in ourselves the need for philosophy through the wonder of being, we will see how it is with us and with the world. The need for philosophy, awakened from the experience of wonder, experiences that this is how it is with us and the world, that being is forgotten, that the beings are annihilated, the world itself is devastated and man is deprived of humanity.
The experience of wonder at being and its absence leads us to the experience of dismay at its deprivation, which can be described by the term nihilism. An example of the experience of dismay at nihilism is the poetic composition Sign of Power (Znamení moci) by Jan Zahradníček, which brings this experience of nihilism to the fore.
From the dismay that being is not and being is nothingness comes the question of the essential definition of art, namely poetry, and at the same time in the form of the question "who is the poet?" the question of the poet's being. Vladimir Holan's poetic composition A Night with Hamlet (Noc s Hamletem) serves as an example of reflection on the being of art and the poet in the situation of prevailing nihilism, bringing to the fore the transformative claim of honesty placed on the poet and his work in the face of the hegemony of nihilism.
By reflecting on poetic compositions, philosophy can learn about itself and discover what else it still means to us in a situation where nothing matters and everything is expendable.