The idea of the Slavic philosophical congress in the twenties of the 20th century

Abstract

The paper depicts three attempts to convene the Slavonic philosophical congress. The first of them was initiated by V. Dvorniković, a philosopher from Zagreb, in his article published in 1923 in the Prager Presse daily. In this article, he appealed to Slavs to crown the achievement of state and national independence (1918) with spiritual emancipation. He proposed holding a meeting of Slavonic philosophers in Prague, which has a central position between northern and southern Slavs, organised philosophical life and the personality of T. G. Masa­ryk, the “doyen of Slavonic sociologists and philosophers”. At first Slavonic philosophers welcomed the idea; however, the originally unanimous opinion of Czech philosophers started to fragment, and the intention was not carried out. The second attempt to convene the congress in Prague was made after the 5th international philosophical congress (Naples, 1924). There, Slavonic philosophers elected a preparatory committee (W. M. Koz­łowski, N. O. Los­skij, S. L. Frank, V. Dvorniković, B. Petronijević, K. Vorovka), but the congress was not held because of the lack of interest of the Česká mysl (Czech Mind). The third attempt rose from the 2nd Polish philosophical congress (Warsaw, 1927), but the effort fell flat this time as well due to critical objections of the main representatives of philosophical life in Prague (F. Krejčí, E. Rádl). Even though they failed to hold the congress in the 1920s, the idea did not come to an end and the interest in philosophy of Slavonic nations continued in Czechoslovakia as well as in the world.