Bernard Bolzano: A New Evaluation of His Thought and His Circle

This book introduces the ethical, philosophical, and social legacy of the work of Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), highlighting the theological element of Bolzano’s thought. Bolzano influenced several key thinkers (primarily Catholic priests) such as Vincenc Zahradnik, Josef Michael Fesl, Anton Krombholz, Frantisek Schneider, and their pupils and successors. Zahradnik co-founded an important professional Czech periodical and created much of modern Czech theological terminology. Anton Krombholz became an important representative of Austrian education after 1848, working at the Vienna Ministry of Education. Based on her previous comprehensive Czech monograph, the author now highlights other new manuscripts from Krombholz’s literary legacy. She underscores connections between Bolzano’s legacy and the reform movement of the Czech Catholic clergy, emphasizing that Bolzano’s ideas resonated in Czech Catholic modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Notwithstanding the tumultuous national development of Czechs and Germans in nineteenth-century Bohemia, Bolzano’s conception of a peaceful coexistence between the two nationalities in Bohemia very favorably contributed to the preservation of the unity of the Catholic Church during such ethnically complex times. The author’s theological conception drew upon the works of Jan Milic Lochman (1922-2004), who, in addition to writing on contemporary ecumenical themes, also dealt with the spiritual legacy of the Czech National Revival.