This course traces the trajectory of Czech intellectual life from the 19th-century National Revival to the post-1989 democratic transition. While Tomáš G. Masaryk and Václav Havel serve as key reference points, the course highlights a wider circle of thinkers — from Palacký, Rádl, and Weltsch to Patočka, Kundera, and Kosík — who shaped debates about nation, democracy, ideology, and dissent. Students will read and interpret primary texts and situate them within the broader European intellectual landscape.
Last update: Hanyš Milan, Mgr., Ph.D. (01.09.2025)
This course traces the trajectory of Czech intellectual life from the 19th-century National Revival to the post-1989 democratic transition. While Tomáš G. Masaryk and Václav Havel serve as key reference points, the course highlights a wider circle of thinkers — from Palacký, Rádl, and Weltsch to Patočka, Kundera, and Kosík — who shaped debates about nation, democracy, ideology, and dissent. Students will read and interpret primary texts and situate them within the broader European intellectual landscape.
Last update: Hanyš Milan, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.09.2025)
Aim of the course
By the end of the course, students will be able to: • Identify central figures and currents in Czech intellectual history. • Analyze how Czech thinkers responded to modernity, nationalism, totalitarianism, and democracy. • Compare Czech intellectual debates with broader European thought. • Reflect critically on the role of intellectuals in shaping society, politics, and cultural identity.
Last update: Hanyš Milan, Mgr., Ph.D. (01.09.2025)
Course completion requirements
Assessment & Requirements
Participation Attendance + basic contribution to discussions 20% In-Class Reflection (28.11.) 300–500 word handwritten response 30% Final In-Class Essay Exam (January) - essay question + 1 passage commentary 50%
Last update: Hanyš Milan, Mgr., Ph.D. (21.10.2025)
Syllabus
Weekly Schedule:
10.10. František Palacký and the Rise of Czech Nationalism in the 19th Century17.10. Palacky's Letter to Frankfurt / Hugo Schauer: Our Two Questions 24.10. Tomáš G. Masaryk: The Suicide, The Modern Man and Religion & The Czech Question 31.10. Study week / no class 7.11. Tomáš G. Masaryk I: The Problem of Small Nations, The New Europe, The Making of a State 14.11. In-class Reflection 21.11. Václav Havel: Dear Dr. Husák 28.11. Study week / no class; assigned reading: The Power of the Powerless 5.12. Václav Havel — The Power of the Powerless 12.12. Milan Kundera - A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe (1984) https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cuni/detail.action?docID=30651852
[recommended Kundera, "Die Weltliteratur", in The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts, pgs. 31-49]
19.12.
Primary Sources
Čapek, Karel. Talks with T.G. Masaryk. North Haven: Catbird Press, 1995.
Havel, Václav. Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965–1990. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Havel, Václav, and John Keane, eds. The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 1985.
Patočka, Jan, Living in Problematicity. Edited by Eric Manton. Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2020
Kundera, Milan. “The Tragedy of Central Europe.” New York Review of Books, April 26, 1984.
Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue. The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk (1850–1937): An Anthology, edited by Goerge J. Kovtun. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990.
Masaryk, Tomáš G. « The New Europe ». In Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010. https://books.openedition.org/ceup/2011.
Masaryk, Tomáš G. « The Czech Question ». In Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States, traduit par Peter Kussi. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010. https://books.openedition.org/ceup/1989.
Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue. Suicide and the Meaning of Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Havel, Václav, Michnik, Adam. An Uncanny Era: Conversations Between Václav Havel and Adam Michnik. Ed. by E. Matynia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Trencsényi, Balázs, and Michal Kopeček, eds. Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770–1945): Texts and Commentaries. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006.
Recommended novels:
The following selection of Czech fiction and drama in English translation offers students an accessible introduction to the country’s modern intellectual and cultural history. Each work illuminates a distinctive response to the moral, political, and existential challenges of 20th-century Central Europe—from Hašek’s anti-authoritarian satire to Havel’s theatre of dissent.
Jaroslav Hašek — The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War
Jiří Weil - Life with a Star
Jiří Weil - Mendelssohn is on the Roof
Karel Čapek — War with the Newts
Bohumil Hrabal —Too Loud a Solitude
Josef Škvorecký — The Cowards
Milan Kundera — The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Milan Kundera - The Joke
Václav Havel — Selected Plays (incl. Audience, The Garden Party, Protest, Mistake)
Ludvík Vaculík - A Czech Dreambook
Secondary Literature
Falk, Barbara J. The dilemmas of dissidence in East-Central Europe: citizen intellectuals and philosopher kings. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003.
Kopeček, Michal. “Czech Communist Intellectuals and the ‘National Road to Socialism’: Zdenìk Nejedlý and Karel Kosík, 1945–1968.” In Ideological Storms: Intellectuals, Dictators, and the Totalitarian Temptation, edited by Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, 345–90. Central European University Press, 2019. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctvs1g8th.17.
Kopeček, Michal. “Czechoslovak Interwar Democracy and Its Critical Introspections.” Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift Für Moderne Europäische Geschichte / Revue d’histoire Européenne Contemporaine 17, no. 1 (2019): 7–15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26832800.
Hanyš, Milan. “Beyond ‘The Power of the Powerless’: the Political Thought and Polemics of the Czechoslovak Opposition, 1977–1980.” East Central Europe 50, no. 2–3 (2023): 279–303. https://doi.org/10.30965/18763308-50020006.
Novotna, Tereza. “Civic and Ethnic Conceptions of Nationhood in the First Czechoslovak Republic: Emanuel Rádl’s Theories of Nationalism.” Studies In Ethnicity & Nationalism 8, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 579–94. doi:10.1111/j.1754-9469.2008.00035.x.
Sekerák, Marián. “Czechoslovak Intellectual Debate on the Crisis of Democracy in the 1930s.” Studies in East European Thought 75 (2022): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-021-09456-9.
Skilling, H. Gordon. Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia. London: Allen & Unwin, 1981.
Szporluk, Roman. The Political Thought of Thomas G. Masaryk. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Trencsényi, Balázs, Maria Falina, Maciej Janowski, Monika Baár, and Michal Kopeček. A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Vol. 1: Negotiating Modernity, 1770–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Trencsényi, Balázs, Monika Baár, Michal Kopeček, Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, and Maria Falina. A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Vol. 2: Negotiating Modernity, 1918–1968. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Tucker, Aviezer. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.
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Last update: Hanyš Milan, Mgr., Ph.D. (07.12.2025)
