This article is primarily concerned with examining the structure of the philosophical opinions of Emanuel Rádl, and it demonstrates the theological and religious contexts of his thought. Professor E. Rádl, a quite exceptional and generally controversial figure, predominantly from the time of the First Republic, was known for his extraordinary social activity, both publicational and political. The aim of this text is, however, to present Emanuel Rádl as an original religious thinker and to show the religious structure of his philosophical thought.
An analysis of Rádl’s Útěcha z filosofie (The Consolation of Philosophy) reveals it to be a work in which Rádl, ailing and overcome by events, resorts to mere moralising. It is my view that, even here, he maintains the full dynamic unity of wordly reality, which governs life itself, and abstract morality, which is supported by philosophical theories and systems. Despite the fact that many theses and concepts in the Consolation give the impression of a stereotypical moralising of life (“The Moral Order”), we always find in the text, alongside these themes, counterbalancing realist theses (life itself, the individual). I understand this balance between a concrete and a moral approach to human life as the principle reason for treating Rádl as closer to Socrates than to Plato (on the basis of the conception of the difference between Socrates and Plato in “Eternity and Historicity”, I take issue with Patočka’s “Platonic” interpretation of Rádl).
A significant share of the “struggles” that took place within Czechoslovak inter-war philosophy lay in criticism raised by Emanuel Rádl, the representative of the realistic approach, against the adherents of individualism or the younger philosophical generation surrounding the magazine Ruch filosofický. From a philosophical and methodological point of view, the core of Rádl’s critical position is philosophical realism. Rádl’s realistic stance was gradually forming and developing during the periods running up to and following the First World War, while the experience and fear of the consequences of Russian philosophy based on mysticism, intuitivism and idealism, proved to be the tipping point. Besides that, the change in his stance towards Kant’s philosophy, which consisted of highlighting the positive aspect of his rationalism, was yet another significant turnabout. From his post-war realist position, Rádl proceeded to criticise the alienation, apoliticism and amorality of the philosophy of individualism and the interest of its representatives in the philosophical approaches of irrationalism: mysticism, intuitivism and spiritualism.
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