Masaryk as an Interpreter of Russian Philosophy

Abstract

Although T. G. Masaryk is now known more widely as a political figure than as a professor of philosophy, several of his major books are products not of his public life but of his earlier, academic career. Among these works the most ambitious and perhaps the most important is his history of Russian thought, first published in German in 1913¹ and issued in an English translation as The Spirit of Russia in 1919.² Though ultimately intended, like all of Masaryk’s writings, to throw light on the real social and political world of his day, The Spirit of Russia has the world of philosophical thought as its immediate object, and in it Masaryk’s stance is that of the scholar rather than the statesman.