Philosophy in Times of Communism – Reflections from Beyond
By Paul Richard Blum
(Loyola University Maryland, currently Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci)
It is difficult to write about my
experiences with Czech philosophers of the times before the Velvet Revolution
without speaking ad hominem. Fact is
that Stanislav Sousedík was the first scholar at all whom I got to know as
living under the conditions of communism or socialism. And it is possible to
tie the fact that in Spring 2012 I am a guest professor at Palacký University
into a narrative that starts in the early 1980s when I first met him. However,
I need to refrain from telling anecdotes because I do not own them as long as
the heroes of those stories were the heroes that survived oppression. And yet,
it was those anecdotes that opened my eyes.
For instance, when I looked for some 17th century
books at the Strahov library, coming from West Berlin, the librarian approached
me and rattled down a number of questions (how is the Berlin library, how many books,
what kind of books, …) and excused himself saying: "We know nothing,
nothing …" At that point I had learned something. Or how I gradually
learned – by the measure in which the authorities chose to withhold printing
paper – that editing the works of Comenius on the mercy of the Party can be
subversive and conspiratorial. The
history of oppression, and specifically of communism, is full of stories of the
same structure – and that is the point!
What I gathered early on is that Aristotle's theory of antiperistasis works in the human world:
oppression of the mind strengthens those intellectual and moral forces that
are, indeed, strong. And hence oppression hatches its own defeat. The communist
or socialist regimes of the 20th century were defeated by those
strong minds. Hence my conclusion was: resistance is possible. Resistance does
not have to take on violent forms, because it is oppression itself that
occasions the measure and means of resistance. Hence a second conclusion: I would
wish never to be forced to resist. As I said, the anecdotes that would
illustrate these conclusions are owned by their agents: Sousedík and countless
others whom I met in almost all countries under (former) Soviet domination
since the 1980s. They will, telling those stories in their own words, establish
a living tradition from the inside of the life of the mind under duress.
One more meaning I want to point out, namely, a sense of circumspection
born out of insecurity that may be essential for all human endeavors and
certainly should give profile to the way a philosopher, who is lucky not to be
endangered, proceeds while thinking. Let me mask this lesson with another
story. I was honored (well, back then, I was just plunged into that) to teach
in the "Pantoffeluniversität", these unofficial gatherings around
some local or foreign philosophy teacher in some private apartment. When we
Westerners asked who the audience was, we were told it is safer for them and
for us, not to know. Later I came to speculate, since many Dominican friars
were among the students, whether I might have had in front of me the present
Cardinal of Prague or his friend the late President of the Czech Republic. My
conclusion is: always think as a philosopher and a teacher as though you had a
future Cardinal or President among your students!
