The term ‘breakthrough generation’ was coined by the German philosopher Hugo Fischer (1897–1975) in 1930, at the very beginning of the Great Depression. This structural notion represents a timeless, emancipation oriented ideal that effectively integrates the relevant positive qualities and abilities of modern and critically thinking man, which he has potentially picked up in the course of his historical development towards a higher humanity as a European and realist, and which he actually possesses as qualities and norms. This complex ethos is intended to form the initial basis on which the modern idea of a European federation is consciously realised. The purpose of this paper is not only to creatively point to these concrete and supporting motivational starting points and qualitative-historical assumptions of the modern European and to place them in a functional framework of intelligibility, but also to recall the important historical-philosophical fact that Fischer’s specifically grasped and developed idea of the formation of post-war Europe is very closely linked to the thinking of T. G. Masaryk, whom Fischer admired and respected as a philosopher and statesman and whose democratizing idea of a ‘new’ Central European space fundamentally inspired him in many ways.
The generational approach aims to reconstruct the existential context of the development of philosophy, to study the personal ties within the philosophical community. Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 has led to a split in the Russian philosophical network. The years of war practically destroyed professional solidarity in the Russian academic community, which is divided into three camps. In the first one, there are researchers opposed to Putin’s regime who have left Russia and found new work in universities and research centres around the world. These colleagues have united in a number of new structures aimed at critically analysing the origins and consequences of the military catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. Some academics who have not found a use for their professional skills abroad have been forced to either change their occupation or return to Russia. In the second camp, there are colleagues working in Russia who see their mission in passive resistance and escapism. Most of them are intimidated and depressed. By the end of 2024, they began to remark that the Kremlin and the Duma were increasingly turning to academics for expert opinion and assistance in developing a new ideology. In the third camp, there are philosophers who share the values of the Russian far right and support the war and repression in Russia, and who are developing a Russian military philosophy. The article examines the transformation of values over two years of war in four generations of Russian philosophers active today (the so-called generations of “stagnation”, “glasnost”, “market reforms” and “relocalisation”).
The aim of the present paper is to examine ethical and moral philosophical thinking in Slovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, with particular emphasis on the content of the journal Filozofia published by the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA). This study analyses how political and social transformations, especially after February 1948, influenced philosophical discourse, paying particular attention to the development and reformulation of ethical and moral concepts. The main hypothesis of the paper is that, despite the dominant influence of Marxist-Leninist philosophy in the period under study, efforts to criticize and reinterpret this ideology gradually emerged in the 1960s, while alternative approaches began to take shape. The first part of the study focuses on an analysis of the journal Filozofia from its beginnings in 1946 to the end of the 1950s. The second part examines how the authors gradually revised the dogmatic principles of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, criticized Stalinist distortions, and opened the way for new ethical and moral approaches. The controversies that arose in this context reflect an effort to overcome ideological limitations and find new ways of philosophical thinking in a period of fundamental socio-political change.
The leitmotif of the article is an analysis and interpretation of disputes about the nature of Slovak philosophy in the contexts of the formation of individual philosophical generations from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. In the content core of the article, the dispute is about the nature of Slovak philosophy in the first generation of its representatives, which was represented by the followers of the so-called "& Scaron;t & uacute;r School". As a follow-up to this dispute, the article analyzes the ideological confrontations of followers of religious and secular philosophical thought in Slovakia during the first Czechoslovak republic. It is a dispute between followers of classical (European) positivism and, partly, Masarykism with the representatives of contemporary religious philosophy in Slovakia. At the end of the paper, the trend of disputes about the nature of Slovak philosophy is outlined even in the period after the Stalinist, and, later, the so-called normalization indoctrination of Slovak philosophy.
The post-war generation of Marxist Slovak intelligentsia was formed from people who had experience with the war and this experience in the fight against fascism, together with the pre-war social situation, were the main reasons of their inclinations towards the theory of socialism and at the same time caused their sharp criticism of the Church and its ideas. Jaroslav Čelko can also be included in the generation of these authors, and this paper describes and explores his ideas and their influence on the development of secular humanism during the existence of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and after its disintegration. At the same time, the aim of the paper is to evaluate the influences and connections between the ideas of scientific atheism (including examples of the works of Jaroslav Čelko) and secular humanism in Slovakia.
