Publication Details

Abstract

The present article — which is an extract of the author’s more extensive study — deals with the question of the more recent history of Slovak philosophy. It takes up the problem of the philosophical development in Slovakia during the period 1940 — 1944, that is, at the time of the „Slovak State“. The author follows this topic on the pages of the Philosophical Collection edited by Matica Slovenská, which began to appear in: 1940 and was in fact the first specialized philosophical periodical in Slovakia. The author makes note in the first place, of the internal diversity in the philosophical views, of certain controversies and polemics which appeared on the pages of this journal. And this both among the various antagonistic philosophies, as well as within the Catholic religious philosophy itself, which at that time supplied the main programme-contents of this periodical. In the progressive, scientifically-oriented philosophy, his attention is taken up in particular by Igor Hrušovský’s activity, who in the early fourties was the principal representative of the progressive wing of professional philosophy in Slovakia. Nevertheless, the author notices also controversies and polemics which existed within the idealistic and religiously-oriented philosophy as manifested concretely, for instance, between Stefan Polakovič, the representative of the official, Government-supported philosophy and the clerical-fascist ideology, and for instance, Dr. Jozef Dieška and Alexander Hirner who on more than one occasion opposed this philosophy. The author endeavours not only to sketch out a certain differentiated picture of the philosophy during this complex developmental period in Slovakia, but in contrast to the not too distant past, to present a historically truer and more adequate reappraisal of certain personalities, philosophically active during this period. The study is one of a series of contributions necessary for a consecutive synthetical processing and elucidation of the history of philosophy in Slovakia, a work actually in progress at the Philosophical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.