Tomas Garrigue Masaryk i kriza Europe

In: Politicka misao, Band 40, Heft 3, S. 145-154

Abstract

Describes the attitude of T. G. Masaryk to the crisis of Europe, defined as the dysfunction & the collapse of democratic regimes in Europe. The author wants to answer the question why Masaryk in his ideology never made a mention of the totalitarian danger presented by the German Nazism & its nefarious politics of conquest to democracy & to the other nations in Europe. It seems that Masaryk's disregard for the challenges to the democratic order in Europe & his stance regarding the crisis in Europe stemmed from his attitude toward the ethnic community of the Sudetenland Germans, stemming in turn from his understanding of democracy. Masaryk's notion of democracy completely ignored the idea of collective rights & consequently overlooked the need for an improved communication with the German ethnic community in Czechoslovakia. Because of the processes of the European integration, the following question is in order: is it necessary for the democratic idea to include the idea of collective rights or is it, as most contemporary theories say, in fact fatal for the development of liberal democracy? 13 References. Adapted from the source document.