Krize moderní doby. Články, projevy a rozhovory o českoslov. roce 1968 a střední Evropě

The book includes texts written in the 1960s and 1990s. The core of the volume consists of essays, speeches, polemics, and interviews closely or loosely related to the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Their central theme is an awareness of the modern crisis in our fundamental relationship to reality: an analysis of the causes and manifestations of this crisis, as well as possible ways out of it. In them, Kosík reflects, for example, on the relationship between morality and politics, the individual and “grand” history, socialism and democracy, but he also ponders the meaning of politics, the very idea and reality of socialism, and the function of science and technology in modern societies. In addition, he reflects on the fate of small nations and the idea of Central Europe. He frames his reflections with observations on political events in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, of which he was not only an observer in 1968 but also an active participant. The volume concludes with late essays from the 1990s, in which Kosík assesses the year 1968 with hindsight and enriches his earlier diagnosis of the crisis of the modern era with new insights.