Hledání české filosofie

The author inquires into the legitimacy of ethnically specific philosophy. He defines philosophy as casting doubt on fact and tracing lines of meaning in being as consciousness. Such questioning and seeking can claim ethnic specificity when it focuses on the lot and task of a given community of pilgrims through history. Precisely by inquiring into the meaning of history, if any, and the task of a given community within it – again, if any – philosophic reflection helps constitute a particular set of dwellers of a land and speakers of a language into a community we are accustomed to call a nation. The author completes his study by sketching the way three Czech thinkers of the second half of the twentieth cent¬ury who won European recognition – Jan Patočka, Karel Kosík, Milan Machovec – approached this task