Roman Szporluk

Between Ideology and Utopia: The Politics and Philosophy of August Cieszkowski@@@Selected Writings of August Cieszkowski

Nineteenth-century European intellectual history has given rise to such varied and abundant research that one is surprised to find certain important problems long identified and yet still relatively unexplored. Such is the case for certain aspects of the crucial transition from Hegel to Marx, for minority tendencies among French socialists and for the Messianic phenomenon, national and religious, so central to the period, particularly in Eastern Europe, and so rarely studied in detail. Certainly, these lacunae are exemplified by the absence of any com prehensive work on August Cieszkowski whose overall contribution to the history of the period may be marginal but whose specific role in each of the areas mentioned is both significant in itself and illustrative of certain wider problems. Cieszkowski first achieved recognition as the author of the Pro legomena zur Historiosophie in 1838. This short tract never became popular among the Berlin Hegelians for whom it was intended but it affected a number of radical intellectuals outside their circle. His next work, Gott und Palingenesie, was a defense of personal immortality against Hegelian revisionism. The following year, however, he founded as a bulwark of the Hegelian school the Philosophische Gesellschaft against external critics and internal dissolution.

The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring: The Development of Reformist Ideas in Czechoslovakia 1956-1967@@@The Czechoslovak Experiment: 1968-1969

1. Introduction 2. The push of 1956 3. Legal re-thinking 4. Philosophy of man 5. The importance of culture 6. Alienation 7. National awareness 8. Historians draw a lesson 9. The economic and scientific factor 10. Conceptual political thought 11. Political blueprints 12. Foreign policy 13. Conclusions Postscripts 1970 Index.