Some Philosophical Aspects of Elza Kučera

Abstract

The focus of this work are two aspects of the philosophy of Elza Kučera (1883 — 1972). Kučera received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Zurich in 1909, becoming the first Croatian woman born in Croatia to receive a PhD in philosophy. Her main interest was psychology, and later library science, and, apart from her PhD theses, almost all her published works are within these disciplines. However, among her handwritten and unpublished works that are preserved in the archives of the National and University Library in Zagreb a certain number of “purely” philosophical texts can be found. In order to present her philosophical approach, we analyze two particular questions she dealt with. The first is the problem of causality that she discussed in her overview of Thomas Brown’s epistemology in her dissertation entitled The Epistemology of Thomas Brown: A Historical Study (Die Erkenntnislehre von Thomas Brown: eine historische Studie, Zagreb, 1909). The second is the question of national philosophy, which she developed in a short unpublished text from 1918 or 1919. Given that Elza Kučera, as the first woman philosopher, experimental psychologist, and woman librarian in Croatia, has not received due attention to this day, we also present her biography.