Studia Philosophica

Volume 64, Issue 1, 2017

Notes on the Life and Work of the Philosopher Mihajlo Rostohar

Professor of philosophy and psychology, native Slovenian, Mihajlo Rostohar (1878-1966) is known primarily as the founder of the Institute of Psychology at Masaryk University in Brno and as the founder of the holistic and experimental psychological school in Brno. Less frequently it has been remembered that in the years 1923-1926 he was the head of the Seminar of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University and that his transition from Charles University, where he received a habilitation in philosophy in 1911, to Brno was also influenced by the fact that he was considered as Otakar Zich's successor in the leadership of the Seminar of Philosophy (he lectured psychology, sometimes epistemology there until 1939). This article focuses on philosophical topics, mostly connected with his conception of psychology, through which he had disputes with the positivist oriented Frantisek Krejčí. The author's attention is focused on, besides Rostohar's opinion on religion, his psychological analyses of the process of cognition, the individual sensory and rational elements (Rostohar was awarded by his habilitation degree with the work on hypothetical judgments), the role of language in thinking, and not least the responsibility of researchers for their opinions, which they present to the public. The final part, which discuss Rostohar's (still up to date) book Nationality and its moral significance, recalls Rostohar's rich; public, social and educational activities.