Philosopher Miroslav Tyrš

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the ideas and principles that stimulated the thinking of Miroslav Tyrš, one of the most popular public figures in the Czech national and social life in the 1860s who endeavoured to devevelop the awareness of unity and mutuality motivated by the physical perfection and fitness of Ancient Greeks. His whole life and thought was inspired by the skills of his admired Olympic champions and by ancient civilisation. Not only did he author the Czech gymnastics terminology, but he also became the chief promoter of the Sokol, a sports club which helped to enhance the nation's physical fitness. A patriot and experienced instructor, Tyrš was above all a scholar -philosopher, later on, mainly aesthetician and art critic who formulated his ideas under the strong influence of the 19th-century positivism and irrationalism, which had to respond to such landmarks in sciences as Darwin's startling teaching about evolution based on natural selection and struggle for existence and J. G. Mendel's lectures on trait heredity or the formulation of the theory of unity between plant and animal cells. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's ideas about the blind unconscious will were in Tyrš's thought coupled with the willpower of a strong able-bodied individual to exist, the will to live and survive. In Tyrš, Darwin's theory as applied to society never assumed the extreme socially Darwinist character, but employed competitiveness to defend the optimistic vision of progress and development.