-236 The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk
and positive work of detail. In my view, parties ought not to he
allowed a long period for mere electoral agitation. The general 21 Thought and Lifeelection should follow upon the end of a Parliament as soon as the
technical arrangements can be made.
Source This text was selected from the third part of Hovory s T. G. Masarykem
(Conversations with T. G. Masaryk). The work, Masaryk's most
From The Making of a State, New York, 1969, pp. 371-2, 375-85, 39&g4,
410-12, 419-20. personal book, was not written by Masaryk directly, but was the
result of a fortunate idea of the writer Karel capek. Discussing with
Masaryk, tapek took notes which Masaryk sometimes reread and
supplemented with his own comments. The book is a refreshingly
readable self-portrait, the third part being specifically devoted to
Masaryk's thinking. Thefirst twoparts of Hovory s T. G. Masarykem
were published in 1928-29, the third part appeared in 1935. An English
translation of the first two parts, entitled President Masaryk Tells
His Story, was published in 1935, and was reprinted in 1971. A
translation of the third part, under the title Masaryk on Thought and
Life, appeared in 1938, and was reprinted in 1971. The selections are
taken from the chapters Epistemology - the Theory of Knowledge,
Metaphysics, and Religion.
ON KNOWLEDGE
You enquire of my philosophy, my epistemology, and metaphysics
-yes, in their literal sense I have not worked them out systematically,
only now and again have I written this or that; I have formulated
1 them pro for0 inferno, that, of course, is understood. Every man
has his own philosophy, or if you like, his own metaphysics. Let me
explain to you first: I have never pretended to be a philosopher, not
I to say a metaphysician.
And so speaks a professor of philosophy!
True! I used to teach the history of philosophy, the philosophy of
history, I taught sociology; yes, in them I did bring in my philosophy,
my metaphysics, but I did not lecture, or write of it as a whole.
Psychology, ethics, the philosophy of law, philosophy of history,
sociology, and so on, are often included in philosophy, hut that
is an erroneous system for classifying the sciences. These are all
specialised, independent sciences. Of course, every specialised
i
237
238 The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk Thought and Life 239
science has its own philosophical foundations, its close relation to
philosophy. Of real philosophical sciences there are only two: logic,
including epistemology, and metaphysics. Philosophy - with this
word one conceives on the one hand some sort of wisdom, some
deeper understanding and knowledge, and on the other a general
conception of the world and of life. For me philosophy, I mean
scientific philosophy, is an attempt to achieve a general conception
of the world, inclusive of the mind; it should be the sum total of all
knowledge, the synthesis of all sciences - but can anyone today
comprehend all the sciences, developed into such specialisations?
Well, it is impossible even if one were ever so learned. That is the
grave problem: what is, what can philosophy be, or metaphysics,
beside the specialised sciences.
And there ir the problem whether philosophy and metaphysics are
a science.
Not that! Philosophy, and, therefore, metaphysics too, cannot be
anything else but scientific, they must never, on any account, be in
conflict with scientific knowledge. If I call it a problem, I mean by
that a task; that task is clear, but to solve it is difficult; in it the last
word will never be said, just as the last word will never be said in
human knowledge.
But to give you an answer: my philosophy, my epistemology, and
metaphysics are implicit in my literary works; they are also bound
up with my actions and the way in which I have acted.
PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE
In a naive epistemological state man imagines that through his senses
he perceives things as they really are, that things are simply mirrored
in us. Later on, with better observation, he discovers that our senses
are bound to make mistakes, that our senses and mind do not depict
things quite exactly; and by further and better observation of himself,
he becomes aware that in perceiving the subject is not merely passive,
merely receptive, but that he works actively on the images that he
receives from outside. For instance: beyond us, 'outside' are not
general concepts, but individual, and concrete things; and yet without
general concepts we cannot think, or obtain knowledge. In the
evolution of philosophy this led to the idea that the ego, spirit,
consciousness, subject is not a mirror but something active, something
that more or less creates of itself our items of knowledge. Our
knowledge at any rate is partly subjective, it is the work of our
minds. Or to use the slang of the philosophers, to the old, original
objectivism, epistemological subjectivismbecame added. Hence arise
those conflicts between different epistemological theories: either they
are more or less objective, realistic - our knowledge being caused
and conditioned by things external to us, by objects, by objective
reality; or subjective, idealistic, as one says - all knowledge being
the product of our minds.
You know that the decisive turn to this subjectivism and idealism
was given by Kant, and by the philosophers after Kant. What Copernicus
achieved in astronomy Kant did in epistemology: knowledge
does not conform to the objects, but the objects conform to our
knowledge; what we take to be the external world, reality, is the
product of our subjectivity. It is only a step in time from subjectivism
to solipsism: Only myself, solus ipse. I alone am the creator of
the world, the world is my idea. Kant and the German idealists
overtrumped the superman and created the supercreator. Funny,
how the human mind can be so conceited. Extreme subjectivism, I
should say, is betrayal by the philosophers, betrayal by educated
men as a whole.
From this I see that you profess epistemological realism,
objectivism.
Yes. How otherwise? A man who desires to act, to act in a
practical way, and with responsibility, cannot be a subjectivist. I
acknowledge the subjective world. Things external to us that we
try to comprehend are approximately such as they appear to our
experience.
RATIONALISM
It was Plato who combined epistemological mysticism with rationalism,
that is with radical rationalism, and after him came others.
According to Plato the senses do not apprehend, only reason does
that; not experience but general concepts constitute real knowledge.
But whereabouts in us, creatures of the senses, Plato enquires, have
the general concepts arisen? Plato was a weak psychologist, and,
therefore, he had only this one answer: Abstract concepts, abstract
knowledge, are nothing but the remembrance, anamnesis of ideas
which the soul in its pre-corporal life perceived in the realm of
eternal ideas, that is, in metaphysical reality. Material, concrete
240 The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk Thought and Life 241
things only remind us of those eternal ideas which our soul beheld
before we were born as human beings. In Plato we have a nice
example of what we have already been speaking about: first the
priority of abstract thought; then the beginnings of criticism - he
takes exception to the unreliability of the senses; mythology - he
anthropomorphises concepts into some sort of higher entities, ideas;
at last also turning back to the subject - he enquires where in us the
concepts arise. Plato was the true father of philosophy; that is the
reason why he had such an influence on philosophy - and still has.
After him the Neo-Platonist Plotinus gathered together and
embodied these ideas in the eternal Nus, the cosmic reason, from
which our spirit 'emanates', is enlightened by it, and filled with
knowledge. Saint Angustine followed Plotinus, but in Nus he understood
God; Plato's ideas become divine thoughts, our understanding
is the divine enlightenment. An interesting connection between
rationalism and the epistemology of revelation.
Aristotle, the industrious disciple of Plato, was scientifically more
critical, he also sought for a more empirical psychology. He brought
Plato's ideas from the supernatural realm of ideas down to earth,
and put them into concrete things; ideas are the substance or kernel
of things. Knowledge springs from the empirical, from concrete
perception, hut reason stimulated by the senses penetrates to the
substance of entity. You can see how Aristotle struggled with Plato's
myth; his semi-mythical philosophy and epistemology were taken
over by the Medieval Church; Thomas Aquinas is an Aristotelian,
Augustine is a Platonist.
The new philosophy - Descartes, Herbert of Cherbury, Leibniz,
and others - found a secure foundation for our knowledge in innate
ideas. Our fundamental conceptions of God, morality, and so on,
do not come from our sense-experience, or from the activities of
reason, but they are inborn in us, and this endows them with a
higher and indubitable validity. But: why should innate ideas have
such an absolute validity, where would they obtain it? And how, by
what criterion shall we distinguish them from those that are not
inborn? Critical consciousness finds with Locke that there are no
innate ideas. After all: what else are innate ideas but ideas put into
us by God? It is only a revival of the theory of revelation: rationalism
saves itself through superreason, superrationalism.
After Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, after the sceptic Hume, comes
the rationalist Kant with the thesis of a priori objects of knowledge
which do not come from experience but from pure reason. You
I
know how Kant produced a whole system out of such concepts of
pure reason: the a priori forms of knowledge - time and space, the
categories, or the most general concepts, like the notion of quantity,
and causality, then the a priori ideas - soul, world, God, and for
ethics the categorical imperative. An a priori concept one can recognise,
he saysbecause it is inevitable and general, whereas experience,
sense, and ordinary reflection, 'disconrsive,' not 'intuitive', only provide
accidental and particular concepts. A priori concepts are not
innate, they are the 'acts' of pure thought; they do not come from
ourselves, they are notions begotten by pure reason without fertilisation
by experience, in fact something like an immaculate conception
of spotless, unalloyed, pure reason - again a revelation, but a blind
one.
One cannot accept Kant's priorism. Already, if you please, that
Kant makes a difference between 'Verstand', and 'Vernunft', and
that this Vernunft is higher than Verstand; this is what the German
language led him to. A Czech, and others besides, who have only
one reason would not arrive at this epistemological dualism. It is
one of Kant's great weaknesses that he did not produce a safe
criterion for a priori concepts; he says that they are necessary, and
universal: a very unreliable and uncertain criterion, for we draw
many universal judgements also from experience, and that necessity
is equally unreliable. When I am dealing with fundamentalarithmetical
and geometrical concepts, then I see the rightness and necessity
of every mathematical theorem from the concepts themselves; mathematics,
therefore, beginning with Pythagoras and Plato down to
Kant and later: has been the model for certain knowledge, and the
standard for the certainty of the other sciences. Kant also stuck to
the model and, in fact, to the mathematical superstition; by his a
priorism, after this model, he tried to make natural sciences, and
metaphysics, also certain besides mathematics. That was a mistake;
after all, it is obvious that mathematical concepts are quite different
from those of the natural sciences, and of metaphysics; the certainty
of the natural sciences is different, being based more on experience
than mathematical certainty.
But Kant's epistemology has yet another fatal weakness. For it
makes a distinction between the thing in itself and the 'world of
appearances', but where does such a difference arise? It can, in the
extreme case, mean that man does not apprehend the real kernel,
the real and inner substance of things, that he apprehends things
only in part, approximately. There is sense in that, and it has been
Thought and Life 243242 The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk
accepted from the very beginnings of more exact thought. But from
the contrast between what appears to us, and the things as they
really are, Kant created a sharp dualism: categories, and concepts a
priori in general, particularly the category of causality, are valid only
for phenomena, not for the things in themselves - how then does
Kant know that there are any things in themselves, when the causal
law is not valid for them, but only for phenomena? The thing in
itself then cannot act on the subject if the law of causality is only
valid for phenomena!
There would still be plenty of objections to Kant's a priorism; in
addition to others there is also the one that objects of knowledge
stated by Kant to be a priori can quite well be explained by experience,
for instance, the intuitive forms of space and time, similarly,
categories and ideas, like the idea of God, and some others.
Kant is the typical representative of a period of transition, of the
transition from mythical revelation to critical, scientific empiricism.
He sat on two stools - a theological and a philosophical one, - and
by this very half-heartedness he achieved his reputation. He avoided
extreme and non-sensical subjectivism - solipsism -by his metaphysical
trick of 'the thing in itself'. Kant's followers, and German philosophy
as a whole, did come to that extreme subjectivism; Fichte
replaces Kant's 'half-heartedness' by 'absolute idealism', that is by
solipsism, Schelling, directly and expressly, returns to myth,
Schopenhauer made the world the work of our will and of our ideas.
Instead of 'absolute' idealism Hegel put his 'objective' idealism again
another play with words; the absolute subject was re-christened
the 'objective spirit' - the deuce like the devil.
All Kant's a priorism is phantasy, myth; that dualism of pure and
impure reason is the old dualism of reason and the senses based on
the wrong psychological analysis of the process of perception. This
contradiction between reason and the senses has been hanging over
from the Greeks through the Middle Ages up to the present time.
There is reason, and there are the senses, but they are not in conflict.
I ask you, why should pure reason give better and more certain
knowledge than impure reason which is connected with the senses,
and which forms our experience?
EPISTEMOLOGICAL SCEPTICISM
In opposition to all the theories concerning nonempirical, superempirical,
and therefore certain knowledge, Hume brought fornard
his septicism; in so doing he placed the human mind radically back
within the limitations of uncertain experience. It is a healthy scepticism,
but scepticism all the same; and here it is to Kant's credit that
against scepticism he brought forward criticism. Not scepticism, but
criticism; not to doubt but to ascertain exactly, patiently, critically.
Hume concentrated his scepticism on the problem of causality; the
concept of causality for him is an empirical one, altogether all our
perceptions, except the mathematical ones, come from experience,
they are, therefore, inexact, and uncertain; for that reason the metaphysical
and theological views concerning God, and similar beings,
are erroneous because they transgress experience. The causal concept
is not one of reason, it is established by mere habit: man sees
the sun rise in the morning, he gets used to it, and therefore expects
it also to rise tomorrow. Hume asserts that the concept of cause and
effect has its origin only in the association of ideas, thus in the
common experience that after A comes B. So for Hume the whole
of natural science is based on the blind concept of causality, it has
no logical justification, it only rests on usage, on the psychological,
not logical association of cause with effect. Certain knowledge only
mathematics provides.
Against Hume's scepticism which rejected all knowledge as being
uncertain except that of mathematics, which rejected not only metaphysics
- not to speak of theology - but also empirical knowledge,
appertaining to natural sciences - against this scepticism Kant
brought forward his system of a priori concepts. By this a priorism
he tried to guarantee the certainty of the findings of natural science,
but also those of metaphysics, ethics and religion. He followed Hume
in the idea that empirical knowledge is unreliable; in that way he hit
upon the idea that the foundations of knowledge, that the fundamental
concepts are supra-empirical, a priori, that causality, time, space,
and what not are a priori - so that by those a priori concepts he
might prop up empirical knowledge! Vain labour: that a priorism
was a failure, it was a phantasy that took its revenge on its originator.
Kant himself said that he 'had to abolish knowledge to make room
for faith'. In the same way Comte developing Hume's positivism
came eventually to fetishism. That is the fate of scepticism: that at
last it tries to escape from itself - by plunging into phantasy.
244 The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk
Scepticism is possible in theory; but is consistent scepticismpossible
in practice?
Hardly - in so far as we are not mere onlookers, and critics of
life. A sceptic in practice simply behaves like non-sceptics. There is
no sceptical action, there is only sceptical thought. And what refers
to epistemological scepticism - the fact that our concepts in natural
sciences and in philosophy are only more or less probable - is no
reason for scepticism. It is understood, empiricism, the experience
of the senses is inaccurate, and unreliable, but it is controlled and
developed by reason, even by exact mathematical reason as you see
in modem natural science which is always becoming more and more
applied mathematics.
It is important that Hume with his scepticism acknowledged the
moral liability because its foundation, sympathy, humanity is sanctioned
by itself; to love one's neighbour, and because of that to help
him as far as possible, that needs no proof that it is right - the
sanction of sympathy is given by itself. That is right, and it is the
more important that this doctrine comes from a sceptic. My first
university lecture in Prague was on Hume's scepticism; in it already
then I gave expression to my anti-sceptical programme. But for
myself I can say: Hume was particularly important for me, he corrected
what was of a Platonist in me; I should say the same for
Mam's materialism.
CONCLUSIONS: CONCRETISM
This already is characteristic of your own view.
Yes. Concretism in one word, is the opposite to scepticism; it
recognises not only reason but also the senses, the feelings, and the
will, taken altogether, the whole experience of our consciousness;
sticking to experience it rejects all non-empirical, contra-empirical,
supra-empirical theories.
And so to a great extent: James's radical empiricism.
But without exceptional experiences. Scientific thought manages
without them, except to examine them critically. Concretism above
all is critical: it subjects experience to reason.
Concretism does not set senses and reason in opposition, it does
not oppose reason to the other spiritual activities, it accepts man in
his entirety; it acknowledges the substance and the value of all
Thought and Life 245
spiritual capacities and activities, it tries to find a rule for a full and
harmonious life.
Concretism recognises individualities in nature, in society, and in
the whole world, and these it strives to know; it is fully aware that
it obtains knowledge of particulars by abstract concepts.
For scientificinterpretation concretism has this chief rule: to grasp
things and explain them of themselves, not by the analogical method
of myth. As far as is possible it replaces myth by critical, scientific
knowledge. It strives for lucidity and exactness, it knows what it
does know, and what it does not.
In addition to mathematical concepts it recognizes as well the
concepts of natural science, of psychology, history, and of all other
sciences as a whole. And the sciences -they are the experiences and
reason of many individuals and of all ages. I verify my experiences
and my reasoning by the reason and experience of others - other
men also have reason and experience. All the time to bring to
consciousness what we know, and what we don't know! Criticism,
sir, must also be self-criticism. If we desire to achieve certainty for
our knowledge there is only one way: scientific honesty, patience,
and clarity; and then to offer one's concepts to the future generations
for criticism and improvement. In all this concretism finds sufficient
guarantees of truth.
Clear thinking is painful - the loss of myth is painful, often to
understand new things is painful; there is also an epistemological
xenophobia - I deduce not only from xenos, stranger, but also from
to xenon, a strange and unknown thing; in thinking man is also a
person of habit. Real wisdom, real knowledge is eternally young,
eternally on the move, and new - then experience also is eternally
new for us: 'herrlich wie am ersten Tag', I should say with Goethe.
THE SOUL AND THE WORLD
True, I cannot say what the soul is like and what it is; I ascribe
spiritual activities to the soul and partly also to the body, the brain,
the senses; but how the soul and the body act on each other, that I
don't know - after all, no explanation, whether it be materialism or
psychological parallelism can explain that satisfactorily. And what
will it be like, what will life be like after death - that I know still
less. I don't know how to believe that after death we shall pass into
some divine primary substance as monism, pantheism teach: I want
246 The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk
to be myself also after death, I don't want to dissolve into some
metaphysical jelly; I am a metaphysical individualist if you like to
call me that. Perhaps after death we shall be given fuller and more
complete knowledge, also knowledge of God; it may be that life
after death is an asymptote approaching to God: always and always
nearer, eternally nearer - well yes, this also is a continuation of life
upon earth, because God is the chief and foremost object of our
thinking, knowing and striving. God and the soul. One is connected
with the other. The Soul and God, that is the dual problem of our
thinking, and striving - I should say, the true task of life.
You talk like a pure spiritualist; and yet all your life you have been
taking on other tasks, actual, practical, real ones -it is notfor nothing
that they called you a realist.
Of course, sir; but even in the actual and material, a spiritual and
eternal process is taking place. Only today I found in my papers the
oriental aphorism: 'A man should act as if everything mattered, but
in his inner self a small Buddha sits for whom nothing matters.'
Nothing -that is expressed and felt in the oriental way; in our way
it would be; for whom behind all that is temporal, and material,
what is eternal and spiritual matters. Faith in the spiritual, the accent
on the spiritual, does not mean that we ought to, and are allowed
to disregard matter and the body. After all in a philosophical sense,
we do not know what the substance of matter is. It is given us like
the soul, it is given to us only by way of the soul, through our
perception and thinking: what right have we got to undervalue it?
All knowledge of matter is only the expansion of our spiritual activities;
soul and matter are not in opposition to each other. The soul,
body, and matter, all reality is given to us for our knowledge, and
development; our souls and our material surroundings we ought to
develop to greater perfection. The idea that matter is something
lower and less pure than the spirit is wrong. In this Plato went
wrong, and after him the theologians and philosophers because with
contempt they turned away from matter, nature, and the world.
And yet you call yourself a Platonist.
Yes. But that does not mean that I accept all Plato's views. I am
a Platonist in so far as I seek ideas in the cosmos, that in what is
transitory I seek what is enduring, and eternal. I cannot be interested
solely in movement, but in what is moving, what is changing. In
natural development I seek purpose and order, sense in historical
progress; I enquire for what purpose it all happened, and where it
is leading to. Against Darwinism, against one-sided evolutionism,
Thought and L$e 247
and historicism, I accentuate the static side: that, that is permanent
and eternal. Not simply the panta rhei of Heraclitus, not simply
continual change, but the substance of the things that change; in
addition to dynamics, and with it statics, the great architecture of all
being. In man, therefore, I also seek that which endures: his immortal
soul.
THE RELIGION O F JESUS
I have noticed one: whenever you mention your own faith you quote
Christ and the Apostles.
Yes. Jesus - I usually do not say Christ -for me he is the example
and teacher of religiousness; he teaches that love towards a kind
God, love of one's neighbour and even of one's enemy, and thus a
pure, unstained humanity, is the substance of religion. Religiousness
and morality for Jesus are the chief elements of religion. Notice that
in the Gospels - in comparison with the Old Testament, or with
Greek mythology - there is almost no mythology, almost no cosmology,
and eschatology, almost no history; there you do not find
detailed regulations concerning cult and ritual; nor ecclesiastical
organisation. Jesus gives almost nothing but moral instructions, he
turns continually to practical questions as he is forced by the life
around him; he manifests himself in his love towards his neighbour
by effective help in spiritual and physical misery. Just look again
into the Gospels: how discreet are Jesus' theological prescriptions,
and his references to the transcendental! God is father to him, to
Him he is in an intimate personal relation, but he does not speak of
this relation much, he lives it, and he does not lay down any system
of theology. Jesus was a living example; he did not preach love
merely with words, but he continually put it into practice, he associated
with the poor, and lowly, he sought out the sinners, and those
morally outcast, he healed the sick, filled the hungry, he warned the
rich. Such a living faith spreads more by example than with words,
like a fire, like an infection. Jesus gave no proof of his religion,
speaking always as one that had authority; he entered into no theological
disputes. but he confuted the Scribes and Pharisees by pointing
to the falseness of their religiousness and morality. He showed
that real religion, real religiousness permeates the whole of life, even
the daily one, the ordinary one, and it permeates it always, at every
moment; most people are satisfied with Sabbath-day religion, with
The
Spirit of Thomas G.Masaryk I
an ostentatious, and hardly sincere religion - only in exceptional
circumstances, especially when things are looking bad, d o they Selected Biographical
remember the Good Lord, and cry for help and expect signs and
miracles. But eternal life will not be only after death, and in the
other world -we live in eternity already now, and always. Of course,
Glossary
people d o not like to be aware of that, they put eternity a long way
from them; they keep it in reserve for the time after death. Religion Aksakov, Konstantin Sergeevich (1817-60), Russian essayist and critic. At
can be experienced not only in church, but also in the factory, in fint a Hegelian, he became a leading champion of Slavophile ideas.
the field, in the cowshed, and in the drawing-room, in sadness, and Amiel, Henri Frbdbric (1821-81), French writer; professor in Geneva. Noted
in joy. That is Jesus' example. among his contemplative and pessimistic writings are the posthumously
published diaries, Fragments d'lm journal intime.
Source
Annenkov, Pavel Vasilevich (181247), Russian literary critic; member of
From Masaryk on Thought of Life: Conversations with Karel ?apek, Free- Belinsky's circle, publisher of Pushkin's writings.
port, NY, 1971, pp. 9-11, 35-7, 45-57, 70-2, 946.
Baader, Franz Xaver von (1765-1841), German Catholic philosopher and
theologian. His romantic mysticism strongly influenced Schelling.
Ballanche, Pierre-Simon (178&1855), French philosopher; believer in progress
by evolution, later disillusioned. A melancholy and deeply religious
thinker, he wrote in a brilliant style, but his ideas were often marred by an
obscure mystic symbolism.
Batiushknv, Konstantin Nikolaevich (1787-1855), Russian poet. A precursor
of Pushkin, he improved Russian literary language. He participated in the
war against Napoleon. In 1821 he became insane.
Belinsky, Vissarion Grigorevich (1811-48), Russian critic, journalist, and
philosopher. He lived and worked in a circle of friends which included
Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Bakunin, Herzen, Nekrasov and Turgenev. Influenced
by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, hc moved to a left Hegelian position,
and then to French socialism. In his writings, published mainly in the liberal
journal Otechesrvennyia zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland), he emphasised
the social purpose of literature. His influence on Russian literary criticism
is felt to this day.
Beneke, Friedrich Eduard (1798-1854), German philosopher; opponent of
Hegel. He was one of the founders of modern empirical psychology in which
he saw the real base of philosophy.
Blahoslav, Jan (1523-71), Czech humanist. An outstanding writer, he
became bishop of the Unity of the Bohemian Brethren and contributed eight
volumes to their history. His translation of the New Testament into the
vernacular was incorporated into the great Czech Bible Kralickd Bible.
Block, Maurice (1816-99), French economist and statistician; author of many
works popularising political and social economics.
!
249