Jóhann Páll Árnason: A Pražák

Abstract

Abstract The “Czechoslovakian Sixties” can be described as the culmination of an incredible intellectual activity. Jóhann P. Árnason spent this time as a student at Charles University in Prague, deeply immersed in the Czech and Slovak intellectual life. This article claims that his personal experience with “Czechoslovakian (Hi)Story,” as well as with its intellectual reflections, significantly influenced the development of his socio-theoretical point of view. However, this ambitious claim will be confined to only three foci. First, Jóhann Árnason will be placed into the Czechoslovakian context. By this, the intellectual and artistic achievements of the 1960s will be put into contrast with the creative “impotence” of the 1990s, which, inter alia, is a consequence of the dominance of the transitological approach in political and social sciences at that time (i.). This approach is strongly criticized across the paper, especially in the second part, introducing Boris Buden’s critique of it (ii.) Finally, that “intellectual impotence” will be explained by using Árnason’s reading of Jan Patočka’s text Supercivilization and its Inner Conflict (iii.).