In her article the author contemplates the autobiographical work of the Austrian writer and humanist Stefan Zweig (1881 to 1942) called “The World of Yesterday“, subtitled “The Reminiscences of the European“. Stefan Zweig wrote his autobiography while exiled in Brazil shortly before he committed suicide. On the one hand, Stefan Zweig, direct participant in and witness to two world wars within the “short“ 20th century, describes humanity’s as well as his own generation’s hopes put into the era of liberty and rationality at the background of the disintegration of the Austrian empire. On the other hand, he describes the fall of liberalism and the rise of chauvinistic nationalism (Nazism and antisemitism) associated with the degradation of man and human dignity. The great author’s faith in and desire for the rise of global civic society have been left unfulfilled until the present day.
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The study analyses the philosophical and cultural atmosphere of Middle Europe as observed by the Czech philosopher Václav Bělohradský. Writers and philosophers such as Robert Musil, Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Stephan Zweig, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others identified their personal and literary (literary-philosophical) lives with the historically unique and unrepeatable concept of Middle Europe. The Habsburg Empire of the 19th century embodied the epicentre of such uniqueness. The above-named philosophizing authors recognized the future European crisis in the agony of the multi-national empire, and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in their works reflects the crisis of the occidental rationality. The hypertrophy of science, scientific rationality and its significance to the detriment of human life and emotions signifies that the rational, the order, legality and law take precedence over the spiritual. The culmination of this hypertrophy is reflected in the loss of personal responsibility for one’s actions – Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities“ is born; in the present it is a person who “did not break the law“.
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The currently developing cross-border cooperation among the regions of Eastern Slovakia and Transcarpathia – part of the European Union’s strategy (“Europe 2020”) – can benefit from their common historic and cultural heritage. The general reference is to the impressive histories and the uncommonly complicated destinies of the regions’ individuals and their entire societies. Both phenomena have to be viewed in the geopolitical and historical context of (the often idealized) Middle Europe as a macro-region whose core was formed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. Eastern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia in their positions as a region (or regions) of the Middle European Habsburg Empire often lagged behind economically and societally compared to the West; they struggled with the religious and ethnic plurality, or more precisely, were intolerant of them. Their dramatic destinies were characterized by an uncertain statehood (unstable statehood coordinates), by their distrust against the political and religious elites; they could not fulfil their role as a barrier against the dangers from the East – Eastern Orthodox Russia and Muslim Ottomans.
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The study analyses the metamorphoses of the phenomenon of religion at the secular age. It analyses more precisely the intensifying process of the individualization of religion. It is based on the concept of the non-existent secularization as metanarrative. Post-modern society has been undergoing extensive secularization on the one hand but on the other hand religion has been experiencing resurgence within the public arena (de-privatization of religion). New cults engaging in de-traditionalization and deinstitutionalization are being formed; faith is experiencing deregulation, and religious symbols and various levels of transcendence are invoked applying liberal logic. Deregulated and liberally chosen religious approaches epitomize the particular dialectics of individualization and de-individualization, i. e. they represent an attempt at a parallel individual and societal spiritual metamorphosis.
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This study analyses one of the aspects of J. B. Metz´s political theology, more precisely its anthropological aspect; it contrasts the means and objectives of the political theology with the "non-political politics". Political theology itself is one of the unofficial branches of the present-day Catholic theology; theology after the Second Vatican Council. It distinguishes itself critically from the neo-tomistic interpretation of the world – from the neo-tomistic metaphysics which depicts the world in the dichotomy of the good God and the evil human. Political theology at the background of Kant´s criticism of ontotheology emphasizes „sinful“, ordinary people and their world. It aims to construct a unified world without the superstructure of the religious supernatural; it treats man as a subject that thinks god and is his partner at the transformation of the world. According to J.B. Metz, the anamnestic reason, memoria passions, is the tool for the transformation of the world = the uncompleted Enlightenment project.
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The study examines the association between the ideology of multiculturalism and political correctness. The policy of multicultural correctness is becoming obsolete as a result of vanishing universal values and the need for trans-cultural harmony. Multiculturalism accompanies politically unlimited globalization where the criterion of social justice is replaced with the criterion of differentiation and where it is diminished to cultural differences. Multiculturalism as an emancipation tool may only function under the circumstances when human rights are treated primarily as social rights. The Islamism of the Western European ghetto abuses the disparity between the political and social rights. The return to the culture of the ancient homeland (=Islam) is a reaction to poverty and a form of protest against social powerlessness.
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