Nation-Building outside the State?

Abstract

This essay is a response to the discussion paper by Daniela Tinková on Enlightenment and vernacularization. The author welcomes the approach that sees Enlightenment as a debate, since to see it as a battle is to confuse logical truth with fiction. It should be said, however, that Tinková’s model attributes an active role only to the elites, and overstates the idea of the disappearance of the state. In the 18th century we may not have had a national state, but we did have a state. A common fallacy among Czechs regarding the timing and mechanism of the emergence of the National Revival is to ignore that state and consequently espouse the unrealistic thesis that the national agitation arose among a free people in the repressive period preceding March 1848. They also fail to appreciate the importance of the constitutional monarchy post-1861, when for the first time Czechs were able to engage in free political debate. As a result it was not until the late 19th century that a belated Czech Enlightenment took hold, inspired largely by France and Scotland. Home-grown Enlightenment traditions had by then been forgotten.

Keywords

• national revival
• vernacularization
• t. g. masaryk
• david hume
• břetislav foustka