MASARYK, TOMÁŠ GARRIGUE. - Czech politician and sociologist, b. 7 March 1850 at Hodonín (Moravia), d. 14 Sept. 1937 at Lány (Bohemia). His name is linked to the founding of the Czechoslovak republic.
In Dec. 1914 he left Austria and went over to the camp of the Entente, carrying on propaganda there for the rise of an independent Czechoslovak State and for organizing into "legions" the numerous Czech prisoners, deserters and volunteers slovak prisoners, deserters and volunteers. He also stayed in Russia (1917) with the aim of bringing back to the West the numerous Czechoslovak legionaries, who were threatened with having their road home cut off by the Bolshevik revolution. He was proclaimed president of the new State on 14 Nov. 1918 and then re-elected.
The figure of M. is identified with a significant phase of the Czech national revival. Under his leadership, the "legal" struggle within the framework of the Austrian Empire became a revolutionary struggle for an independent State. In the name of a Czech nationalist conception he wished to include in the new State peoples of different stock: more than three million Germans, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, the Slovaks who, although of Slavic stock, were in good part hostile to Czech predominance and to centralism. In the name of his democratic principles, he was opposed to every form of anti-Semitism, to totalitarian conceptions, to romantic forms of patriotism (one may consider his battle to expose the falsity of certain alleged ancient political documents, the work of a forger-poet). His fundamentally positivist and humanitarian mentality underwent various influences from Protestantism and in particular from various Anglo-Saxon thinkers. His anti-Catholic polemical sallies go back to these peculiar aspects of his culture and to the Hussite traditions, characteristic of many exponents of the Czechoslovak revival. M. was not a philosopher in the full sense of the word, but as a thinker he wrote several books of lively interest. Among these, particular mention should be made of: Blaise Pascal, vita e filosofia (1883); Suicidio, fenomeno sociale frequente della moderna civiltà (1881); Questione cèca (1895); Giovanni Hus, il nostro risorgimento e la nostra riforma (1896); Havlíček, sfarzi e desideri della nostra rinascita (1896); Poligamia e monogamia (1899); Gli ideali umanitari (1899); Russia ed Europa, il mondo e gli Slavi (1913); La rivoluzione mondiale (1925).
T. G. M. places at the center of his "Weltanschauung" man, who does not expect miracles from the God in whom he believes and of whom he is an "indispensable" collaborator. Man as such must seek to resemble God, reforming his own heart, his own reason, his own thoughts and customs, perfecting himself, proceeding from the difficult to the more difficult, that is, from good to better, and not stopping at the mere passage from evil to good. This reform will be achieved only by loving oneself beyond all measure, without forgetting, however, that to love oneself means to cultivate one's own intelligence, to cultivate virtue, that is, creating for oneself an individual and scientific religion that prescinds from every tradition and every authority.
M. looks forward to the advent of humanitarianism, that is, of a religio-ethical era in which only "homo homini frater" will have value. The attainment of this ideal is based on evolution and not on revolution. State, Fatherland, Church, Nation stand on the evolutionary path as temporary phases and are defined as phenomena of society.
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Miroslav Stumpf