Karel Kosík 1965

Man and Philosophy

Written: 1965;
Source: The Autodidact Project;
First Published: Erich Fromm (ed.), Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965, pp. 162-171.
Translated: Ronald Sanders.
Transcribed: Ralph Dumain.

Since there are many areas of specialization which are concerned with man, ranging from those founded upon common sense knowledge of human nature all the way to the arts and sciences, it is not at all clear at first glance whether man has any further need of philosophy in order to know himself. Offhand it would seem that philosophy could attain a truly scientific level only by the exclusion of man from its very foundations as a discipline, i.e., through the critique of anthropologism. Philosophy arrives at the problem of man on the one band too late, achieving a synthesis or a generalization merely on the basis of some other area of specialization, and on the other hand superfluously, since the particular task could have been performed by some other, more specialized discipline.

Common sense knowledge of human nature is the practical, prosaic refutation of anthropological romanticism, for it posits man as being at all times a configuration of interests and invidious attitudes. The lessons of a worldly utilitarianism are implied in this form of knowledge, whereby man perceives man as competitor or friend, neighbor or master, fellow sufferer or acquaintance, colleague or subordinate, and so on. Through everyday utilitarian intercourse, a familiarity with the human character, with its inclinations and habits, is built up, and this knowledge then becomes established as folk wisdom or as practical and general truths, such as: men are deceitful, human nature is fickle, homo homini lupus. Machiavelli's advice to rulers as to how they are to govern rests in part upon this kind of knowledge: “As for men, let the following be said of them in general: they are thankless, fickle, deceitful, cowardly, greedy; as long as you show yourself to be of worth to them they will be with you body and soul, and will offer you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons, provided you have no need of any of these things; but as soon as you need them, they will rebel against you.” (The Prince, Chapter 17.) Hegel considered this kind of knowledge of human nature to be useful and desirable, particularly under poor political conditions, when the arbitrary will of an individual is governing and the relations among men are founded upon intrigues; but such knowledge is entirely without philosophical value, for it cannot rise up from shrewd observation of chance individual occurrences to a grasp of human character in general.

Vek Franca Kafke

With a great preface Somewhere behind Milan Kundera, a close friend of Czech philosopher Karel Kosik (1926-2003), whose collection of essays is in front of readers (in Ilić's selection and translation), Franz Kafka's book Century deals with philosophical and literary topics.

Kosik, who experienced both fascism and communism, played a significant role in the Prague Spring of 1968, then lost his professorship at Charles University and had to change professions, known to local readers for his books Dialectics of the Concrete and Dialectics of Crisis.

In this book, as editor Jelena Majstorov puts it, “Kosik considers and comments on Kafka's belief that the modern age is hostile to the tragic, in whose place it places the grotesque. The attitude that we live in the post-heroic era is elaborated on the examples of the works of two great writers, Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek, and their heroes Joseph K. and Joseph Schweik.

Karel Kosík. Dialektika, kultura a politika

Čtvrtý svazek Sebraných spisů Karla Kosíka zahrnuje články, eseje, rozhovory a kratší příležitostné texty pocházející z let 1955 až 1969. V první části jsou shromážděny stati, jejichž prostřednictvím Kosík vstupoval do polemik o marxismu, o aplikaci marxistické metody i o negativních jevech socialismu. Předestírá zde svoji koncepci dialektiky vycházející z Hegela a Lukácse a načrtává obrysy vlastní verze marxistické teorie, která je v jeho pojetí společenskou kritikou. Druhou část tvoří články, v nichž Kosík dialektiku aplikuje na konkrétní fenomény umění a kultury. V analýze literárních děl (Hemingwaye, Kafky či Haška) rozvíjí úvahy o společenské roli kultury, politice, humanismu apod. Předkládaný svazek představuje Karla Kosíka jako veřejného intelektuála, který se vyjadřoval k aktuálním tématům své doby i k nadčasovým otázkám lidské existence.

Karel Kosík (1926–2003) byl významný český filosof, který se věnoval především marxistické filosofii a historiografii českého politického myšlení 19. století (Česká radikální demokracie, 1958). Proslavil se knihou Dialektika konkrétního (1963), která byla přeložena do řady světových jazyků a dodnes patří k nejcitovanějším českým filosofickým pracím. V letech 1970–1989 nemohl pracovat v oboru. Po roce 1989 vydal několik esejistických souborů: Století Markéty Samsové (1993), Jinoch a smrt (1995) a Předpotopní úvahy (1997); posmrtně vyšel svazek Poslední eseje (2004).

J. Mervart (ed.): "Karel Kosík. Dialektika, politika a kultura. Eseje a články z let 1955-1969". 291 stran, 265 korun.

filosofia.flu.cas.cz/publikace/522

The New Left and the marxian Legacy

The New Left and the Marxian Legacy:  Encounters in the U.S., France and Germany

by Dick Howard

In the mid-1960s, as the Cold War seemed frozen into place after the Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the stalemate that defused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the spirit of a “New Left” began to emerge in the West.Although encouraged by events in the Third World, its common denominator was the idea that the misunderstood (or misused) work of Karl Marx must have offered a theory that both explained the discontent with the present among a new generation of youth and could also offer them guidelines for future action.  At once personal and social, critical and political, this expectation was encouraged by publications of the writings of the young Marx as well as the discovery of non-orthodox theorists and political activists whose critical work had been ignored or suppressed by Soviet dominated communist parties. These theories represented an “unknown dimension”^[1]that became the object of vigorous debate in the 1960s and early 1970s. The searching candle burned bright for a decade before it flamed out.

Meanwhile, the revolutionary spirit that Marx liked to call the “old mole” had grubbed its way underneath the Iron Curtain;  the multi-faceted movement of civil society against the repressive states anchored to the Soviet bloc brought finally the fall of communism.  But the critical spirit was too weak, economic need weighed too heavy, and the spirit of utopia waxed.  It seemed as if there were nothing to inherit from the past. As in the 1960s, the critical spirit of the young Marx, the critical philosopher searching for his path, can suggest a reason to persevere.  In a “Preliminary Note” to his doctoral dissertation, Marx justified his refusal to compromise with existing conditions by invoking the example of Themistocles who, “when Athens was threatened with devastation, convinced the Athenians to take to the sea in order to found a new Athens on another element.”^[2]  This was not yet an anticipation of Marx’s turn away from philosophy to political economy. Like the New Left, Marx was trying to articulate the grounds of a critique of a present that he considered “beneath contempt” in order to hold open the political future.

I will use this idea of a New Left to conceptualize the underlying unity of diverse political experiences during the past half century.  Although Marx is not the direct object of my reconstruction, his specter is a recurring presence at those “nodal points” where the imperative to move to “another element” becomes apparent.  These are moments when the spirit that has animated a movement can advance no further; it is faced with new obstacles, which may be self-created.  I  will analyze from a participant’s perspective the development of the New Left in the U.S., France and West Germany as it tried to articulate what I call the “unknown dimension” of Marx’s theoretical project.

Karel Kosik, philosophe insoumis

KAREL KOSIK, philosophe insoumis

LOWY Michael, TARCUS Horacio

1er mars 2004

Karel Kosik and his family.

Karel Kosik est non seulement un des plus importants philosophes de la deuxième moitié du XX^e siècle, mais aussi un de ceux qui ont le mieux incarné l’esprit de résistance de la pensée critique. Il est aussi un des rares qui ont combattu, dans leur succession, les trois grandes forces d’oppression de l’histoire moderne : le fascisme, au cours des années 1940, le régime bureaucratique stalinien, à partir de 1956, et la dictature du marché, depuis 1989. A une époque où tant de penseurs ont abdiqué de leur autonomie pour servir les puissants de ce monde, ou se sont détournés de la réalité historique pour se livrer à des jeux de langage académiques, Kosik apparaît comme un homme debout, qui refuse de s’incliner, et qui n’hésite pas à penser, contre le courant, les grands problèmes de l’époque.

Karel Kosik est né à Prague en 1926 au sein d’une famille ouvrière. Comme jeune militant du Parti communiste tchèque, il participe à la lutte clandestine de résistance contre le nazisme au sein du groupe dont faisait partie l’écrivain et combattant communiste Julius Fucik, auteur du célèbre Reportage au pied de l’échafaud, exécuté par les occupants. Arrêté par la Gestapo en 1944, Kosik sera d’abord enfermé dans la prison de Pankacic et ensuite déporté au camp de concentration de Terezin, où il restera jusqu’à la fin de la guerre. Soumis aux travaux forcés, il réussit à établir un réseau de correspondance avec l’extérieur grâce à la complicité d’une ouvrière allemande des chemins de fer.

Après la libération de la Tchécoslovaquie, le jeune Kosik a choisi d’étudier la philosophie, d’abord dans sa ville natale. Son prémier maître fut Jan Patocka, qui enseignait Husserl et Heidegger dans les années d’après-guerre à l’Université de Prague. Malgré leurs différences philosophiques, Patocka avait beaucoup d’estime pour son « ami marxiste », dont il dira plus tard qu’il est « le plus important représentant de la philosophie tchèque de l’époque actuelle ». Comme il était l’habitude à l’époque dans les pays de l’Est, Kosik a continué sa formation philosophique à Moscou et à Leningrad entre 1947 et 1949. De retour à Prague, il publie en 1953 Démocrates radicaux tchèques, une anthologie des insurgés de la révolution de 1848 précédée d’une introduction de sa plume. La parution de son premier texte philosophique – un article sur Hegel dans le cadre d’un débat sur la philosophie marxiste —coïncide avec l’année emblématique de 1956, celle du XX^e Congrès du PC soviétique dans lequel Kroutchev dénonce les crimes de Staline et lance ainsi le processus de la « déstalinisation ».

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