The Kosik-Sartre Exchange

On 28 April 1975, the police conducted an investigation into Karel Kosik's apartment and seized some of his manuscripts. This text is the letter (published by Le Monde on 29-30 June 1975) sent  by Karel Kosik to Jean Paul Sartre on this incident ,on 26 May of the following year.

The Kosik-Sartre Exchange

Dear Jean-Paul Sartre,

The event of which I will tell you in this open letter is of the most banal sort and without any interest for the sensationalist press. But it is not to the devotees of the sensational that I address myself. It is to you. And, through you, to my socialist, democratic and communist friends who are also friends of Czechoslovakia. I am not addressing you an appeal or a protest, but one single question which has a vital importance for me:

Am I guilty?

This question haunts me since April 28, 1975, that is to say, since the day the police searched my apartment for six hours and confiscated more than one thousand pages of my philosophical manuscripts.

Given the fact that the search was made under the pretext of a suspicion that I had hidden in my apartment writings which would constitute evidence of a criminal activity, "subversion of the Republic," I must assume that I am threatened with a prison term of from one to five years, as provided by Article 98 of the penal code. I do not underestimate the significance of this threat, but what troubles me more is the eventual fate of the manuscripts confiscated from me.

For the last six years I have had to live in a very peculiar situation: my existence has taken two forms—I am and I am nothing. I am dead and, at the same time, I am alive. In the domain of the elementary rights of the citizen and the man, I have been reduced to a mere nothing, and at the same time, I have been graced with an exceptional existence as far as the overabundance of care and attention from the police is concerned. I am a mere nothing and that is why I cannot teach philosophy at the Charles University, nor be employed anywhere or elsewhere in accordance with my qualifications and in my specialty. I am dead, and that is why I cannot participate in any of the scholarly meetings to which I am invited, nor accept invitations to teach in European universities. As someone who is not and never was, I must not lead my

readers into error and that is why all my publications are banned, kept out of the libraries in Czechoslovakia. And my name has been censured in the list of authors. I do not exist and that is why official institutions are under no obligation to answer my complaints and protests. From another point of view, I exist, even in excess. As is shown  by the police searches and interrogations which are becoming ordinary events. As a philosopher and an author, I am stripped of basic rights and I live as an accused and a permanent suspect.

I am a suspect although I have committed no criminal act. Why then am I suspected? Because I consider the exercise of thought to be an inalienable human right and exercise this right. Because  I consider inalienable the right of every man to have his own opinion and to be able to express and communicate it. Because I consider that every man should be able to keep a spine as a basic human right.

Why am I a suspect?  Because in an environment of generalized suspicion, the most specifically human values and the most commonly shared ones, such as for example, friendship, honor, humor, the sense of politeness, spontaneity and sincerity, become provocations; normal words and the simplest things take on a subversive meaning.

The simple sentence: "I twisted my ankle and I limp," seems to the ears of the police to be a password for a conspiracy. And he who really limps is in the eyes of the police a mere faker who hides a "dark" activity. In such an atmosphere, publicly proclaimed rights are immediately limited or even completely denied: everyone has the right to think, but he who reflects without permission and without being ordered to, or who does not think as he ought to think, awakens suspicion. Everyone can have his opinion, but he who refuses to accept opinions that are imposed and unjustified, that are foreign to his own—which latter have some basis—and who persists in demanding a rational and free discussion, becomes suspect. Everyone has the right to have a spine, but if he does not "voluntarily" and without dignity make a mea culpa which defiles him, he has no hope of being able to publish or to find the sort of work for which he is qualified.

The manuscripts seized by the police were not even destined for publication. In the event it is a matter only of unelaborated working notes, preliminary studies relating to the preparation of two works which will be titled: the first, On Practice, and the second, On Truth. These manuscripts contain only opinions, opinions expressed by others in whom the police are not interested, and mine, which the police already know from my previous books and my articles. I would like to be able to believe the officer of the State Police when he told me that after examination these manuscripts would be

returned to me. But, well, how much time does the police need to "study" a thousand pages of a philosophical manuscript?

To that, other much more serious facts must be added. The police have also confiscated the manuscripts of my friends, the writers Ivan Klima and Ludvig Vaculik. And I must ask the question: April 28, 1975, was I not the witness to events which foreshadow the gravest consequences for Czech culture? On that day did they not make a trial run of the effectiveness of new perfected methods in comparison with which the censorship in force up to then was only a pitiful liberal game? Does not April, 1975, mark the attempt to impose on society a new habit, a new "normality" — the regular confiscation of manuscripts? Might this habit not very rapidly become—in the country of  Franz Kafka—so natural, so necessary a consequence of indoctrination that the writers themselves will call the police to take away completed works? I am not a partisan of these innovations. Up to today I have not received a reply to my request for the return of the manuscripts. Up to now I have kept silent about the discriminatory measures of which I have been the victim, because my person alone was attacked and this did not endanger the basis of my existence—the possibility of thinking and writing. This time, in the case of the confiscation of my philosophical manuscripts, I do not want to remain silent. Because I do not want to be guilty! I would be complicit if I limited myself to watching silently the way a sword of Damocles is held over the heads of all the writers of Czechoslovakia—the threat that the police can take away at any time from any writer a manuscript in progress or

completed.

There is still time to eliminate this threat. I have not lost all hope in the rationality of the responsible leaders in Czechoslovakia. I count on the lucidity and the conscience of the socialist, democratic and communist friends of Czechoslovakia. Accept, dear friend, my most cordial regards,

Karel Kosik

Dear Friend,

If I have taken so long to reply to you, this is because your letter did not reach me. I read of it only a brief fragment in Le Monde and I had some trouble finding it. That's been done now.

I will reply immediately to your question: no, you are not guilty. Your letter would suffice to prove your innocence, not only to me, but to all the friends of invaded and humiliated Czechoslovakia. If there is a thing of which I am certain, it is, as you put it, that every man has the original right and duty to think for himself; and if I, like everyone, have often defended collective ideas, it was because they had penetrated me and because I had compared them to my personal ideas, evaluated and judged them true, in short, because they had become mine.

No government is qualified to judge the thoughts of a citizen. It would do so, in any case, not in terms of thoughts but of pseudo-thoughts. I call true thoughts those which are born from you, or ideas which you have freely examined, found right and made your own. I call pseudo-thoughts the theses supported by your government, and which have never been produced or examined by the thought of a free man, but which are made up of words collected in Soviet Russia and thrown over activities in order to hide them and not to discover their meaning.

These false thoughts are nothing but forces which can only impose themselves with the support of that other—real and material—force: the police. It is to this that criminal leaders wish to reduce Czechoslovak culture. This abomination, or rather this stupidity, cannot last long while there are men like you, my dear friend, to denounce it. For, free thought can be suppressed for a moment by police violence, but as such thought constitutes the only means by which man can grasp his situation and the

procedures that can change it, it would be necessary either to suppress man or to reject

definitively false thoughts.

I cannot commit anyone but myself; but I have discussed your precious and unhappy country sufficiently often and at length to be able to assure you that you have numerous friends who will say with me: "If Karel Kosik is guilty, then all men (not only intellectuals, but farmers and workers) who think about what they do are equally guilty." It is on the basis of this simple idea that we will have to consider activities by which, in helping you, we will help ourselves.

I assure you, my dear friend, of my fraternal sentiments,

Jean-Paul Sartre

Grete samsa, the anti-Antigone of modern times

Antigone vesrus anti-Antigone

«The central figure in Kafka’s story Die Verwandlung (the “Metamorphosis”) written in 1911 is not Gregor Samsa, who metamorphoses overnight into an enormous insect-like creature (“ein ungeheueres Ungeziefer”), but his sister Greta. She actively intervenes in the storyline and her actions bring about its real turning points and twists—i.e., transformations. The grotesque metamorphosis occurs at the moment when Greta Samsa stops treating her brother as a human being, ridding herself of doubt and indecision over whether he is a human being or an animal, and his presence becomes unbearable to her. At this moment Greta abandons her brother and renounces him as a human being: it is no longer her brother lying in the adjoining room, but some king of freakish monster (“ein Untier”). It is only logical that Greta Samsa, a modern anti-Antigone, does not bury her brother herself, but leaves it up to the charwoman to make sure his remains are cleaned up (“wegschaffen”) and disappear from the face of the earth. A person did not pass away, rather an animal died, perished, croaked. The servant woman says of the dead Gregor Samsa: “ … es ist krepiert, da liegt es, ganz und gar krepiert!” When relations between people become so depersonalized that they consider each other to be pestilent insects, it would be grotesque to bury the remains of the people-non-people, these human insects, because it corresponds to their state—i.e., their grotesque transformation, that a funeral cannot be arranged for them—but they will be cleared away with banal utensils, a broom, a shovel and a rag, and disposed of prosaically. “Es” and “krepieren”—these are the appropriate expressions for dealing with grotesque metamorphosis.

But because people, even in their inhuman form, are endowed with consciousness and language, they must justify their actions in some manner—to themselves and to others. And Greta Samsa, the anti-Antigone of modern times, deliberates out loud as follows: Gregor Samsa is no longer her brother, nor a human being. If he was her brother and a human being he would show consideration for the family, would not disturb its peace and quiet, and would voluntarily clear himself away from the house.

For the family, including Greta Samsa, wishes to have peace and quiet (“seine Ruhe haben”) and everything that disturbs this peace is disgusting, repellent, must get out of the way, must be cleared away. And absolutely nothing may be allowed to unsettle this peace, not even death: death has lost its shocking power, it is powerless against the established routine, the ordinary peace which people come to rely on. Greta Samsa personifies this unshakable “peace and quiet” of modern times which cannot be upset by anything and therefore strides toward its goal—over dead bodies. The young body of Greta Samsa, her exuberant, pugnacious, and prolific youth, shakes off everything that could threaten its irrepressible growth, including her brother’s death, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that could spoil this growth and proliferation. Not shocked by anything, unshakable by any death, the bereaved relatives of Gregor Samsa stride onward, even after the death of a brother and son they are entirely preoccupied with “prospects for the future” (“Aussichten für die Zukunft”) which are, as has now become apparent after the death of son and brother, “highly advantageous and most promising, especially in the longer term” (“überaus günstig und besonders für später vielversprechend”).

Greta Samsa, not upset by anything, not even her brother’s death, strides toward her future which is a reproduction of the past, and thus her next life will thus only be a repetition of sterility, narrow-mindedness, past routine, and she will put all her youthful energy into this sterile repetition.

That is why Kafka’s “metamorphosis” is ironic and grotesque on many levels and has many meanings. People have already been so transformed and imprisoned in banality, everyday routine, narrow-mindedness, the pettiness which they consider to be “normality” and ordinariness, that they do not have the power, the willingness or the will to liberate themselves from these degrading circumstances and thus to really and truly transform themselves. Gregor Samsa metamorphoses into an insect overnight, but this external and naturalistic transformation only emphasizes that internally and spiritually he remains within the banality and constriction of his life thus far. He has only changed form, but his self has not metamorphosed. Death is degraded and not even it has the power any longer to wrest people from this banality and narrow-mindedness.

But is the power of banality on the march, striding even over dead bodies, as personified by the figure of Greta Samsa who is the anti-Antigone of modern times, really so omnipotent that it can exclude all possibility of the tragic and in its victorious crusade through the world will sweep every possible Antigone aside?

I had to bring the situation to a head in this way to be able to make the initial question about the possibility, or impossibility, of the tragic in our times more precise and reformulate it into another question: Who if anyone can revolt against the real or imaginary omnipotence of Greta Samsa, who will defy her, the modern Antigone?»

From 

Democracy and the Myth of CaveKarel Kosík

Karel Kosik

Region  Western Philosophy Notable ideas  pseudo-concrete Role  Philosopher		School  Marxism, Neomarxism Name  Karel Kosik Influenced  Reception theory
Born  26 June 1926 Prague, CzechoslovakiaEra  20th-century philosophy Main interests  Social philosophy, Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics Died  February 21, 2003, Prague, Czech Republic Education  Charles University in Prague Children  Irena Kosikova, Antonin Kosik Books  Dialectics of the concrete, The crisis of modernity Similar People  Karl Marx, Gyorgy Lukacs, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Herbert Marcuse

On Czech Marxism

On Czech Marxism: An interview with Ivan Landa and Jan Mervart

LeftEast’s James Robertson speaks with Czech scholars Ivan Landa and Jan Mervart about their current project collating and translating some of the key texts from the history of Czech Marxism.

see the full  interview here

The Democracy and the Myth of Cave

The Democracy and the Myth of Cave

Karel Kosík

The 20th century, which began with shots being fired in Sarajevo in 1914 and in our time is ending with the disintegration of the Soviet empire amid gunfire in that very same Sarajevo, is sometimes also called the century of Franz Kafka (“le siècle de Franz Kafka”)—and this is entirely justified.

Kafka described the essence of this period with extraordinary insight. While it seemed to some of his contemporaries that his texts were dreamlike visions, poetic hyperboles and phantasmagorical hallucinations, today we have come to realize with awe the accuracy and sobriety of his descriptions. Kafka reached the conclusion, and in my view that is where his profound discovery lies, that modern times are hostile to the tragic, eliminating it and replacing it with the grotesque. That is why the century of Franz Kafka is at the same time a period whose quintessence is personified by one of his characters—Greta Samsa. Greta Samsa is the anti-Antigone of the 20th century.

SOURCE

Karel Kosík, “Demokracie a mýtus o jeskyni,” Století Markéty Samsové, Český spisovatel, Prague 1993, p. 11–21.

Greek translation of Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal

Greek translation of Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal (2009) , the work  which remained unpublished until thirty years after the author’s tragic suicide in 1979.

-ΝΕΑ ΚΥΚΛΟΦΟΡΙΑ- 

Η διαλεκτική του Ιδεατού (Диалектика идеального) του Evald Ilyenkov

σειρά: Καλώς Κείμενα (7)
υπεύθυνος σειράς: Βαγγέλης Γαλάνης
μετάφραση - εισαγωγή: Marios Darviras
πρόλογος στην ελληνική έκδοση: Αντρέι Μαϊντάνσκι.
γλώσσα πρωτοτύπου: ρωσικά
μέγεθος: 13Χ20
σελίδες: 176
ISBN: 978-618-81620-7-5

[...] Το «ιδεατό» –ή η «ιδεατότητα» των φαινομένων– αποτελεί πολύ σημαντική κατηγορία για να καταφεύγουμε σε αυτήν απερίσκεπτα και απρόσεκτα, καθώς με αυτή είναι συνδεδεμένη όχι μόνο η μαρξιστική κατανόηση της ουσίας του ιδεαλισμού αλλά επίσης και η ονομασία του.

Ως ιδεαλιστικές θεωρίες θεωρούνται όλες εκείνες οι αντιλήψεις στη φιλοσοφία οι οποίες λαμβάνουν ως αφετηριακό σημείο για την ερμηνεία της ιστορίας και της γνώσης μια σύλληψη του ιδεατού –σαν αυτή η έννοια να μην έχει υποστεί καμιά επεξεργασία– ως συνείδηση ή βούληση, ως νόηση ή ως ψυχισμός εν γένει, ως «ψυχή» ή «πνεύμα», ως «αίσθημα» ή «δημιουργική αρχή» ή ως «κοινωνικά οργανωμένη εμπειρία».

Γι’ αυτόν ακριβώς τον λόγο, το αντι-υλιστικό στρατόπεδο στη φιλοσοφία καλείται ιδεαλισμός, και όχι ας πούμε «νοησιαρχία» ή «ψυχολογισμός», «βουλησιαρχία» ή «συνειδησισμός». Αυτά ήδη αποτελούν επιμέρους προσδιορισμούς του ιδεαλισμού και όχι τους καθολικούς, γενικούς προσδιορισμούς του που είναι ανεξάρτητοι από την ιδιαίτερη μορφή

που προσλαμβάνει. Το «ιδεατό» στο παρόν άρθρο κατανοείται στην ολότητά του ως ένα πλήρες σύνολο δυνατών ερμηνειών, αυτών που είναι ήδη γνωστές αλλά και αυτών που απομένουν ακόμα να ανακαλυφθούν [...]

Görgy Lukács Archive

“Petition against the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ decision to close down the Görgy Lukács Archives in Budapest:

“Lukács was one the significant philosophers of the 20th century, an author of modernity outstanding not only in philosophy but also in the fields of political mindedness, theory of literature, sociology and ethics An author of international renown, Lukács represented one of the intellectual peaks in Hungary’s history of civilisation, his works constitute a part of the treasures of humankind. For decades, the Lukács Archives has facilitated academic and non-academic circles to have access to the documents related to the philosopher’s life and professional achievements. As it is located in the philosopher’s home of his late years, it has also served as a memorial place devoted to a decisive personality of our era. Based on the above, we call on the authorities in charge to re-consider their decision, which took the international community of science and art by consternation and sorrow.””

sign the petition here: http://www.petitions24.com/protest_against_closing_down_the_lukacs_archiv

Historism and Historicism

by Karel Kosik

Marx's famous fragment on classical Greek art shares the fate of many a brilliant thought: the sediment of commentaries and a frequent overstatement of the obvious have obscured its true sense.1 Was Marx investigating the significance and the timeless character of antique art? Was he attempting to solve problems of art and beauty? Is the quote in question an isolated expression or is it related to his other views? What is its proper meaning? Why do those commentators fail who consider only its literal immediacy and see it as an invitation to resolve the question of the ideal character of Greek art? And why do also those interpreters fail who consider Marx's immediate answer as satisfactory, without pausing to question why the manuscript abruptly breaks off in the middle of an idea?

Download pdf file here

Lumpenburžoazie a vyšší duchovní pravda

Lumpenbourgeoisie is a term used primarily in the context of colonial and neocolonial elites in Latin America, which became heavily dependent and supportive of the neocolonial powers. It is a hybrid compound of the German word Lumpen (rags) and the French word bourgeoisie.
Lumpenbourgeoisie is a term often attributed to Andre Gunder Frank in 1972 (although the term is already present in Paul Baran's The Political Economy of Growth from 1957) to describe a type of a middle class and upper class (merchants, lawyers, industrialists, etc.); one that has little collective self-awareness or economic base and who supports the colonial masters. The term is most often used in the context of Latin America.

Frank writing on the origins of the term noted that he created this neologis lumpenbourgeoisie from lumpenproletariat and bourgeoisie because while the Latin America's colonial and neocolonial elites were similar to European bourgeoisie on many levels, they had one major difference. This difference was their mentality of the Marxist lumpenproletariat, the "refuse of all classes" (as described in Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon) easy to manipulate to support the capitalist system, often turning to crime. Similarly, the colonial elites would—while not involved in crime activities—hurt the local economy by aiding the foreign exploiters. Foreign colonial powers want to acquire resources and goods found in the colonies, and they find this facilitated with incorporation of the local elites into the system, as they become intermediaries between the rich colonial buyers and the poor local producers. The local elites become increasingly reliant on the system in which they supervise gathering of the surplus production from the colonies, taking their cut and before the remaining goods are sold abroad. Frank termed this economic system lumpendevelopment and the countries affected by it, lumpenstates.

The term Lumpenbourgeoisie was already used in Austria by about 1926. The author was an Austrian social democratic journalist and he used the term in at least one article in a Viennese periodical. Another example of the use of the term was given by Czech philosopher Karel Kosík in 1997. In his article, Lumpenburžoazie a vyšší duchovní pravda ("Lumpenbourgeoisie and the higher spiritual truth") he defines Lumpenbourgeoisie as "a militant, openly anti-democratic enclave within a functioning, however half-hearted and thus helpless democracy".

"Lumpen-bourgeoisie" also occurs in E. Franklin Frazier's The Black Bourgoisie (1957), which was translated from the original French text that was published in 1955. He uses it to describe African American businessmen who cling to what he terms the "myth of Negro business" to affect meaningful change in racial politics (173). He was especially focused on the development of black-owned business that developed and expanded in both the U.S. South and North during the first decades of the 20th Century. 

Source:WIKIPEDIA

Prague

The birthplace of the Czech Philosopher Karel Kosik as you have never seen

Terezin

Karel Kosík, the Czech philosopher who managed to survive Terezín. 

Concentration camp of Theresienstadt

The concentration camp of Theresienstadt was installed by the Nazis in this city, that today takes the name of Terezín and at the moment is located in Czech Republic, about 60 kilometers to the north of the Prague . 

History

The 10 of June of 1940, Gestapo took the control from Theresienstadt installing a prison in Kleine Festung (" Strength pequeña"). The 24 of November of 1941, the place was turned into Ghetto walled, that presented/displayed a facade that hid the operation of extermination of the Jews, impelled by the head of FOLL, Reinhard Heydrich . For the outer world, Theresienstadt had to appear like a Jewish colony model. A film with the title of Der Führer was even rolled schenkt give to Juden eine Stadt ( " Führer" gives a city to the Jews), to transmit that sensation. But one was a concentration camp, that also was used like field of transition towards Auschwitz and the other extermination fields .

The 3 of May of 1945, the control of the field was transferred by the Germans to the Red Cross . Few days more afternoons, the 8 of May of 1945, Red Army entered Theresienstadt.

Marcuse's letter to Czech philosoph Karel Kosik

Marcuse's letter to Czech philosoph Karel Kosik

 Download file in pdf form

Karel Kosík and dialectics of the concrete

Prague, 4– 6 June 2014

A conference organised by the Department for the Study of Modern Czech Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
The conference will be conducted in English. Proposals – including a title and an abstract of 100 – 200 words – should be sent by 31 December 2013 to landa@flu.cas.cz. Submissions must be in .doc or .rtf format. Notice of acceptance will be sent by 30 January 2014. A conference fee of 100 Euros (60 Euros for students) will cover the costs of organising the conference (including conference accessories and coffee breaks). Details about the method of payment will be announced after abstract acceptance. The conference proceedings will be published as a book in 2015.

Organisers: Ivan Landa, Jan Mervart, Joseph Grim Feinberg

International Organising Committee: Johann P. Arnason, Peter Hudis, Joseph G. Feinberg, Ivan Landa, Michael Löwy, Jan Mervart, Francesco Tava