Conference paper
TOMÁŠ GARRIGUE MASARYK AND THE CRISIS OF EUROPE
Tihomir Cipek
orcid.org/0000-0002-3253-7326
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The text describes the attitude of T. G. Masaryk to the crisis of Europe, defined as the dysfunction and 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 and its nefarious politics of conquest to democracy and to the other nations in Europe. It seems that Masaryk’s disregard for the challenges to the democratic order in Europe and his stance regarding the crisis in Europe stemmed from his attitude towards 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 and 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?
Keywords
crisis of Europe; Czecho-German relations; democracy; collective rights
Hrčak ID:
23081
URI
Publication date:
22.3.2004.
Visits: 1.688 *