Karel Kosík

Infobox_Philosopher
region = Western Philosophers
era = 20th-century philosophy
color = #B0C4DE

name = Karel Kosík
birth = June 26, 1926 (Prague, Czech Republic)
death = February 21, 2003 (Prague, Czech Republic)
school_tradition = Marxism, Neomarxism
main_interests = Social philosophy, Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics
influences = Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Georg Lukács
influenced = reception theory
notable_ideas = pseudo-concrete

Karel Kosík (June 26, 1926 – February 21, 2003) was a Czech Neomarxist philosopher. In his most famous philosophical work "Dialectics of the Concrete" (1963) Kosík presents original synthesis of Martin Heidegger's version of phenomenology and ideas of Young Marx. His later essays can be called as a sharp critique of the modern society from the leftist conservative position.

Biography

Karel Kosík was born in June 26, 1926 in Prague.

From September 1,1943 until his arrestment by Gestapo in November 17, 1944, he was a member of an illegal anti-nazi communist resistance group "Předvoj" (The Vanguard) and a chief editor of an illegal journal "Boj mladých" (The Fight of Youth). After his seizure Kosík was accused of high treason and repeatedly questioned. From January 30 to May 5, 1945 he was imprisoned in Theresienstadt concentration camp.

From 1945 to 1947 Kosík studied philosophy and sociology at the Charles University in Prague. In the years 1947-1949 also attended courses at the Leningrad University and the Moscow State University in the USSR.

Work

"Dialectics of the Concrete"

Philosophical essays

ee also

Bibliography

Major works:
* "Česká radikální demokracie" (Czech Radical Democracy), Praha 1958
* "Dialektika konkrétního" (Dialectics of the Concrete), Praha 1963, 1965, 1966
** English translation: "Dialectics of the Concrete", Dordrecht 1976
** French translation: "La Dialectique du concret", Paris 1970, 1978
** Italian translation: "Dialettica del concreto", Milano 1965, 1972
** Japanese translation: Tokio 1977
** German translation: "Die Dialektik des Konkreten", Frankfurt am Main 1967, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1976
** Spanish translation: "Dialéctica de lo concreto", México 1967
** Catalan translation: "Dialèctica del concret", Barcelona 1970
** Portuguese translation: "Dialética do Concreto", Rio de Janeiro 1969, 1976, 1985, Lisboa 1977
** Greek translation: "Η διαλεκτική του συγκεκριμένου", Αθήνα 1975
** Slovenian translation: "Dialektika konkretnega", Ljubljana 1967
** Serbo-Croatian translation: "Dijalektika konkretnog", Beograd 1967
** Swedish translation: "Det konkretas dialektik", 1979
* "Moral und Gesellschaft" (Morality and Society), Frankfurt am Mein 1968, 1970
* "La nostra crisi attuale" (Our Present Crisis), Roma 1969, Barcelona 1971
* "Století Markéty Samsové" (Marketa Samsova's Century), 1993, 1995
* "Jinoch a smrt" (Young Man and Death), Praha 1995
* "Předpotopní úvahy" (Antediluvian Thoughts), Praha 1997
* "Poslední eseje" (Last Essays), Praha 2004

External links

* [http://www.phil.muni.cz/fil/scf/kosik.html Dictionary of Czech Philosophers] (Czech)
* [http://volny.cz/enelen/kkosik/index.html Kosík's biographic and bibliographic information] (Czech)